Requiem for Rain
by Purple Mongoose
Summary: A young woman, beaten and withdrawn, is put under the care of a man who may be more than her salvation. [Duo/Ami] Feedback is welcome; enjoy! [Working On]
1. Requiem: Prelude

It was raining as it always did and she watched it fall from her silent, shimmering window, quiet and thoughtful and sad. If she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cool glass, let the soft wetness formed inside by cold and humidity melt along her pale skin, she could remember days before the war. But she stayed away from the window, for that was precious to her and if he knew, he would take it from her, lock the door, replace the window with wood or steel, because the constant rain would rot the wood, make it soft and sweet. She cleaned the floor of the room, sweeping it with a broom and ignoring the violet fingerprints burnt into her arms, ignoring the mild pain in her belly from the bleeding and the child lost to her. Shadows touched her eyes, puckering the skin beneath the beautiful, weeping blue orbs that stared and blinked in quiet acquiescence, stirred deep below their dark surfaces to painful turmoil.   
  
It was raining.  
  
--  
Requiem: Prelude  
--  
  
"She came in at three," the nurse explained, wrapping a thin, sticky length of gauze around a small woman's thin thigh, tying and covering up an old gash in it, one that had begun to heal around glass, begun to show signs of infection. The students in the room, mostly male and young, found it difficult to watch the woman naked, seated on the examination table, her dark, smoky blue eyes haunted and lifeless to those who watched her directly, curious to see her and afraid in the same token. It was a mixture of pity, finally, pity and embarrassment for her, that led to more than one student offering his uniform's jacket to cover her, black tops slipped from polo shirts and suspended in motion when the nurse shook her head, glancing at the instructor. "I thought Mrs. Chang told you we can't get her in clothing for a while yet," she said in a disapproving voice, lifting a sopping cloth from a small basin of water, wringing it to dampness and using it to wipe smudges of dirt and blood from the woman's spindly arms, revealing that a great deal of the blood was beneath the skin, swollen bruises in the shape of a man's fingers and burns the size and shape of a lit cigar. "Her skin is far too tender to attempt to."  
  
"Would you explain what happened to her?" the instructor, Sally Chang, asked politely, her ice blue eyes softening when she looked at the unresponsive woman sitting very still on the table, as if she knew, with a sense of fatality and undeniable fact, that moving would get her punished, get her hurt. They all, those in the room, had some sense, more or less, of who she was. The newspapers on the M colonies had gone ballistic with it, reporting with the sensationalism all papers would use about the unknown wife of an infamous drug dealer "from the wrong side of the tracks." He had been killed in crossfire with police on Earth, in a "desperate bid for life, for sanity, a bid brought about by his own horrifying childhood and his inner longing for peace." Two days later, when police stormed his summer home on M-09, the colony famously programmed for continuous rain on one side, they found a woman, cold and noiseless and as close to a conscious coma as any person could be. His wife, they had determined through examination of stale semen, a legal one unlike the countless others scattered among the colonies and Earth. Perhaps the only legal one. She had been found in a delicate white dress, woven from real silk, not the synthetic kind that was easier to buy on the colonies, her ears pierced with perfect pearls, a handcrafted wedding band on her left hand. She had been found stained with blood on her delicate white dress, blood from her own body, from wounds she had not inflicted on herself, the skin around her wedding band burned as if to melt the ring to her finger. Raped and bruised and bloody, all because of her husband. Three days after his death, one after he was dubbed "the poor cartel owner, Philip Cortez," he became the most heinous example of insanity and cruelty. His actions were no longer excused.  
  
"Explain?" the nurse repeated and, quietly, the students nodded out of sync, one head, then five, then two, then four. "Oh." She appeared taken aback, surprised to be asked about something she knew, instead of the doctor waiting impatiently for her to finish dressing the patient. "Well. I suppose." She hesitated, then, carefully touching a strand of the curled, ideal bob the blue-haired woman wore, she began. "She has lacerations on her abdomen, consistent with cuts made with a small hunting knife, and several long, moderately deep gashes in her thighs and shin bones. We were worried her muscles might have been torn, but that turned out not to be the case; we did find her right ankle had all but fused from an untreated break a couple months ago. Doctor Anders is working on fixing that." She paused again, and almost touched the woman's face, but fell short, as if remembering something forbidden.  
  
"Um. The, uh, bruises and minor cuts on her arms you can see, as well as the burns on her lower arms and rib cage, below the breasts. We believe he would, um, pin her down by her arms, when he wanted to…to have intercourse, and the cuts and burns are a punishment of sorts for resisting. We also have reason to believe she was pregnant up to ten days ago; she was found to have extensive internal bleeding around her reproductive organs, the kind concurrent with a miscarriage. Doctor Anders thinks she might have been about midterm when she miscarried, possibly because he, her husband, um, beat her." The nurse cut off, fixating her eyes on the woman who was naked, who did not notice she was naked, who might have thought she was supposed to be. The nurse could not tell them what the Doctor thought, thought she was treated like a doll, meant for pleasure and appearances and stress, kept groomed and pretty, but beaten. A pretty little rag doll.  
  
The students shifted uncomfortably, the males feeling a distant sort of guilt, as if they were tainted by gender, by association of chromosome. Sally nodded and began ushering the students out, taking them by elbow gently and motioning for them to leave, to move out through the doors into the sterile, empty white hallway. "Thank you," she said to the room, to the nurse, and the nurse inclined her head in recognition, her face featureless and kept carefully schooled.   
  
Only when the nurse and the rag doll woman were alone in the room did the nurse let her tears fall, a sorrow stirred deep in her soul for this delicate girl-woman who did not deserve the pain on her naked, unfeeling body.  
  
The woman stared at the nurse's tears and thought it might be raining.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: Um. Right, so before anybody tears into me or backs away, this is only the prologue! This story is meant to be a romance, but I needed some form of 'drama' or whatever, and this spoke to me for some reason. The women in my family tend to find a cause to champion, something related to health to raise a banner for and scream for people to look at. For my grandmother, it happens to be eye disease, for my mother, breast cancer. Mine is rape - I hate it with all my soul and I find it odd that I have only used it once before in a story (my Batman Beyond WIP, 'Friends Incorporated'). Besides, it'll work out eventually. Just stick around, 'cause Duo is coming in soon! And you know what that means! Duo/Ami! Well…eventually.   
  
Brief notes of general importance - this is set in AC 207, making Duo around 27. As Ami will have been a child orphan from the war of AC 195, one about four to five years old, this places her around seventeen to eighteen years in age. Don't expect many of the GW or SM characters to show up; so far, from what I have planned (only up to, say, chapter three of a proposed twenty…), only Duo, Wufei, Sally, and Heero show up. I'd like to put Relena in, seeing as she is one of the coolest female anime characters ever…  
  
Please review. I have no barometer of my own skill other than what you can tell me. I would be immensely flattered if I could know your personal opinion - be it kind, harsh, critical, or helpful, I would welcome it. :] Or you can e-mail me at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. Take a few seconds!  
  
Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease.  
  
The characters from 'New Mobile Report Gundam Wing' and the characters from 'Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon' are copyrighted to their respective owners on any and all continents. I have borrowed them for nonprofit usage in a fanfic and claim no ownership over them. This fanfic and all its events are, however, mine and I claim all liability for any anger it causes in readers. :] Distributed to www.FanFiction.net. 


	2. Requiem: Cello

"Sweetie," Jessica-the-nurse said to her, her voice kind, "would you please put this dress on for me? We have a nice young man coming over to talk to you." She looked at Jessica-the-nurse, not sure what to do for this soft voice that refused to order her around. She felt lost, confused, frightened by the off-kilter feel of this place that was safe, where he was not, and she took the simple frock anyway, rubbing the rough cotton between her fingers. It felt different from the slick smoothness of the gowns she was used to wearing and she looked at the blue cloth, looked at this color that was forbidden to her; white was normal, white was evil, white was always worn because the bright garnet of blood showed on it better, always better, and she stared at the blue longer than she thought she should, trying to understand why she was allowed to wear this color like her hair, like her eyes. Stiffly, she slipped off the metal table onto the metal floor, her swollen ankle flinching at the rug the other nurse had place there, and she felt tiny, filtering daggers of pain under the light weight of her small breasts, but she ignored it. They had left glass in the thin cuts under her round chest, glass they did not know about, and she knew better than to tell someone, because he would find out and get angry. He liked the glass and she pretended to like it, too, because that was how it was done.  
  
She lifted the cotton dress and pulled it over herself, fitting it around her small head and over her thin shoulders, sliding her darkened arms through the short sleeves. A smile was on her face as she tried to stop it, a smile that was nonetheless tiny and nervous and scared. This dress she wanted to keep forever, it was so normal against her skin, brushing her sensitive flesh and not causing tiny bumps to rise in her skin, warm and filled with texture unlike the silk that fit her too tightly.   
  
Jessica-the-nurse smiled back and walked to the door, opening it and letting in the Man.  
  
--  
Requiem: Cello  
--  
  
"Maxwell, if you try to pull any of that bizarre bullshit of yours in there," Wufei Chang warned in the slightly smoldering tone of voice he tended to always use, leaving the threat hanging in a manner that more than compensated for the lack of words. They walked in discord, Wufei in swift, business-like steps that betrayed his military background and stiff nature, steps that moved swiftly with legs that were long for a man of Chinese blood. His companion, a tall American with a thick chestnut braid, moved in loping, nearly lazy steps, lengthy legs stretching and pulling his body along.   
  
"Wufei," he found need to remind his shorter companion, hands tucked into his pockets and a manila folder pinned to his narrow hip by his wrist, large duffel bag tossed over his shoulder, a rakish grin on his face, "I do happen to have some idea of what I'm doing. I kind of have a psychology degree and five years of practice." He thought that succinct enough to leave out the bit where he had managed to have a successful turn out ratio of three out of every five, which, in the already half-crazed world of After Colonization, was pretty damn good, if he did say so himself, and instead they turned a corner, one before the other, moving further down the slowly slanting halls of the hospital/sanitarium, a clock with one long hand and one short, preceding and following and switching order and rhythm.  
  
"Of course you have a psychology degree," Wufei said congenially, or as congenially as he could generally be expected to be. Duo, the whip-o-will man standing somewhere between six feet and the ceiling, grinned in advance preparation for the punch line, one meant to insult in the manner of old acquaintances, and he was left pleasantly rewarded. "I simply question how many female instructors you had to sleep with in order to get it." The Oriental man allowed himself a small, triumphant smile, a bare peaking of the corners of his mouth.   
"Ah," said Duo in reply, nodding sagely as he pulled his hands out of his pockets and flipped open the manila folder as they approached the sanitarily white waiting room of the V.V.C. Sanitarium, reserved for doctors and workers meant to aid the people behind the hydraulic glass door leading to the main hall, from which the many rooms branched off. "That's a question you shall ask and I shall never answer." Wufei nodded his approval of the suitably enigmatic answer, one for an old running joke between the five excommunicated pilots, and split away, headed in the direction of the other hallway from the waiting room, one that led to the section tucked away for the criminally insane. He might have pitied the crazed souls Wufei would mock today, if he wasn't caring for patients the criminally insane had place in the 'loony bin' as well.   
  
"Hey, babe," he winked in greeting to the blonde behind the desk and she winked right back, adding a lascivious smirk to boot. He laughed softly, shaking his head as he pulled the i.d. card from the folder, a simple rectangle of white plastic with a blue stripe running parallel with the left length, a complex bar code imprinted half on the colored stripe, half below it in order to make stealing the identity impossible.   
  
"Well, Dr. Maxwell," the receptionist, a buxom, flirtatious woman by the name of Mina who could have been a model had she not felt such overwhelming pity for those less fortunate, began, handing the card back as she studied the flat computer screen, giggling when he managed to sneak a kiss onto the back of her golden hand, "you've got Aimee Cortez in Room B-902. She's got a standing guard on orders of one Doctor Anders, so you'll need to present your i.d. and the case card, just to be sure." She turned to look at him and flashed her beaming, million-watt smile. "Still on for Friday?"  
  
"What do you think?" he asked sardonically, grinning when she made a move to mock-slap his arm and stepping quickly through the doorway when the hydraulic door hissed open, a burst of compressed air shooting out of the frame, cold and forceful. He made a disgruntled noise at the unwelcome feeling and continued walking, passing B-896, B-899, and stopped at the door of B-902, a little surprised at the short distance he had to walk after the several minutes of twining paths to get to the sanitarium. The guard, a thin young man with a set jaw and a shaven chin - Duo rubbed self-consciously at his light stubble, suddenly, guiltily reminded of oversleeping and having to forego such formalities as breakfast, shaving, and a morning shower on the rush to find a late bus to drive him the hour to the hospital - staring with subdued interest at the rather unusual psychologist, gave him a worn smile and requested, in a bored monotone, for personal i.d. and patient i.d. Fiddling with the wallet in his pocket, he managed to find his personal i.d. after a few false tries and the revelation that he did, indeed, have a library card, expired though it may have been, and presented both required forms of identification.  
  
The door swung open before he could enter, an old-fashioned door complete with swiveling handle and oiled hinges, and a small, rotund woman sporting a nametag with nothing more than 'Jessica, RN' printed on it stepped out. "Oh, good, you're here," she said in a voice that was rather unenthused. "I," she hesitated for a moment, and then plunged headlong into her concerns and advice.   
  
"I'm hardly thrilled to find she's already supposed to be getting psych'ed," she confessed, arching a heavy black eyebrow at his ghost of a beard and he hid it with his hand in what he hoped was a casual, contemplative gesture, "and I don't condone this at all. The poor dear's only been here for a week and we haven't heard a single word from her, even if Dr. Anders swears her vocal cords are perfectly fine. I'll let this happen mostly because I ain't her mother and I ain't her doctor, but I'd like it if you'd be careful around her. She's skittish and easily upset, and she doesn't like being touched anywhere but her face. So…just be nice to her, okay?" She flushed, somewhat embarrassed at her outburst, but he was pleased to find the nurse didn't follow it with a nonassertive apology, to diffuse her stern words and unhappy tone.  
  
"Don't worry," he smiled innocently, knowing completely how his heart-shaped face and mirthful violet eyes, framed as they were by feminine eyelashes, affected the opposite gender, and he hoped the unwelcome hair on his chin wasn't setting it off. He'd occasionally met women who didn't like his braid either, so it was to some relief when her face softened slightly, still a far cry from gentle, but, hell, he had to take what he got. "I'm only here to help."  
  
Jessica eyed him suspiciously for a moment more, and sighed, her shoulders drooping as she shook her head forlornly. "I hope you do help," she admitted, opening the door and ushering him in. He was surprised when she didn't follow, closing, instead, the door and, he assumed, waiting outside with the young-neat-shaven guard.  
  
Duo took his first look at Aimee Cortez, knowing the first name had been assigned her by the good Dr. Anders that they might have something to call her, and saw that, had she been fed better, loved better, she could be beautiful.  
  
As it was, she was a waif of a person, pale as moonlight with dark, dark circles under her eyes that only accented her decisively French cheekbones, arching and slender in round curves. Her arms, wrapped around her knees, pulled to her breasts, were gaunt, skin painted onto bones with weak muscles injured, no doubt, by the mottled colors and scabs lining those thin arms and what he could see of her legs, naught more than two tiny feet, pale and Irish, with small, perfect toes, the foot on her right leg dwarfed by a swollen, violet ankle. She had dark eyes, the kind of deep blue he had seen only on the face of a Japanese mercenary, but hers were not the cold, cruel spheres he had possessed, but the quiet, raging, stormy, smoke-traced ones of a swirling ocean.   
  
The rush of sorrow in his body caught him by surprise, the sudden wave of empathy, of knowing this agony painted on her body that he had never known, felt, touched before, and he barely managed to paste his standard smile onto his lips, feeling as if he could never smile in her presence without feeling a guilt. And it was this horrible malignance that made him do a few quick calculations in his head, taking the age the scant file had given him and subtracting the years back to the war of AC 195. Eighteen now, five then, an orphan of war, a child most likely sold into bondage for a profit during the fearful winter following the war, during the uprising of Mariemaia some called 'Endless Waltz,' thinking it poetic and lovely. He had heard of the things people had done during the winter of AC 196, in desperation for money during the famine and rebellion.   
  
But he still smiled, and she tilted her head to one side, curious, arms unfolding from their places about her knees and bony fingers touching the table she sat on, the bed she slept in at night, thick blankets tucked away in a storage bin in the far corner of the ceiling. She kept her knees at her breasts, afraid of punishment, and studied the Man who smiled at her and pulled a duffel bag from his shoulder, and she remembered sharp things he pulled from a duffel bag once, he-who-she-fears. Don't be afraid, Jessica-the-nurse whispered in her mind, he's a good man, a kind man. No sharp objects, she moaned in despair in her head, swallowed in the shame of knowing she is a bad girl for fearing the sharp objects, he told her so.  
  
He had long hair, hair longer than any she had ever seen, longer than hers had ever been, longer than the other women with dark skin and pale hair she saw time after time in the rooms of pain, screaming in something that wasn't pain, something that turned her stomach like the pain did. His hair wasn't pale though and it was not tainted blue like hers, or the oily greasy black of him, but a color like the strong, big tree that stood outside her precious window, a deep brown. Braided and twisted, with a careful knot at the end to keep it in place, and she wondered what it would be like to have long, long hair. Bad thought, she reminded herself, that's a bad thought to want long hair when I'm meant to have short hair to tug and wrap and pull.   
  
And when the Man looked up at her, she shrank back, tried to hide behind her knees and the cotton blue, behind the air, because he had purple eyes, too thick and deep to be human, in a face shaped like a heart, strong and nice, but he had hair on his chin, just like him, hair that hurt and scraped her skin raw until she bled, crying, and she hated the hair, hated the scraping roughness of it, even if it was the same brown as the long hair she wanted.   
  
"Aimee," he said in a voice that wasn't deep and guttural like him, nor carefully sweet and gentle like Jessica-the-nurse, but an unbidden huskiness that rolled around in her mind, "I've brought you a toy. I know it's not much," he injected humor in it, humor she didn't understand, humor was foreign, "but it's all I could afford, me being a doctor and all. You like?" A doll with black hair, curling and stylized and fake, around a perfect female body, in a simple white dress with a bouncy skirt, and she leaned forward and he leaned forward, and she took it from him, ignoring the smile on his face.   
  
Me, she thought, remembering what the other doctor had told her to do with a doll. Pretend it was her and show him what life was, what she was supposed to do, what was right. The hair was wrong and she fisted her hand in it, pulling it from the scalp of the doll, tearing clumps from softened plastic and arranging them carefully on her table bed, looking at the Man for encouragement. His eyebrows, lovely brown, were wrinkled together.  
  
Duo had never seen a patient mutilate a doll before and he was therefore a little miffed that the one time he brought a high-quality doll, it was the one patient that would mutilate it. Aimee tore at its hair, ripping large chunks of the thick hair out as she held the doll clamped in her legs, lowered into a crossed position before her, and she was displaying an unusually scientific methodical precision in sorting the hairs. He'd stood up as soon as she began tearing, walking over to lean near her and watching her sort the hairs whenever she had torn out enough hair for her to warrant a break. She sorted them into shades, then lengths within the shades, and was moving them into a pattern, English letters without capitalization, upside down from his angle, and he moved carefully to crane his neck around, displaying a patience most people believed he didn't have, passing over the several strands she had clumped together as indefinite. "Miedo?" he read, and she started, pupils dilating as she turned her head to stare, and he stepped back several times, recognizing distrust when he saw it. Miedo, he committed to memory, figuring it was, in the least, worth a shot.   
  
He heard a ripping sound, like cloth being torn by hand, and he walked forward again, almost laughing at the absurdity of his repetition, and saw she had stripped a small piece of her dress off. "Aimee, are you okay?" he asked, pitching his voice into a comforting level. She spared him a curious glance and lifted the scrap of fabric, trying to fit it over the doll's head in place of the black spots signifying where thick, manufactured hair had once resided.   
  
She was trying to make the doll like her, he realized, and he watched, a bit impressed, as she fingered off a bit of the gauze on her arm to use to stick the blue scrap on the doll's naked head. Then, in a single, angry movement, she tore the white dress off the doll, nearly unsettling the toy and sending it to the floor, shredding the cheap accessory into a flurry of scraps, grabbing one of the small arms and squeezing it. She held the doll up to him and motioned with her other hand at her arm, eyes alive with intelligence and telling, and she proceeded to snap the doll's arm once, twice, thrice, and she pulled it from its socket, dropping the butchered toy arm to the floor.  
  
Before Duo could remember Jessica's warning, he had reached forward to calm the raging mind, his fingertips brushing her shoulder ever so gently, and she screamed. She screamed higher, louder, and twisted around, small, compact chest heaving with the force of her cry, and he saw a dark stain lining the cloth under the swell of her breasts, the kind of stain he remembered from war as blood, culminating in one place and turning fabric a dark maroon. "Shit," he swore, a tiny part of his mind asking God why exactly He always gave him the hard jobs, and he lunged forward, nearly leaping onto the table to grab at her, and his large hands planted on her upper arms, squeezing slightly to steady himself. She cut off her scream, fell into silence, and her eyes widened, the brief glimmer of brilliance he had seen there vanishing as her eyes brightened dangerously, then fell dim, collapsing into lifelessness, a defense mechanism that he could recall using time after time, to protect himself for years in his youth, thirteen years ago, and he swore again.  
  
What a damn day.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: I would /love/ to write some happy, jovial crap at around this point, but that'll wait, as I've got some more angst to cover. If you've been reading this story (and I hope someone has!), please suspend disbelief for the moment. ;] Yes, Aimee Cortez is Ami Mizuno, but while I've decided to maintain her intelligence (or capability to learn), she was involved in some bad stuff in this story. So she has an excuse. I'll try to have the beginnings of romance in the third or fourth chapter - just the beginnings! And don't worry, Duo will eventually be the wiseass he always is and Aimee will learn more about physics than your average rocket scientist. Reviews are still highly desired, and I would be eternally grateful - this won't always be a dark fanfic, you know. That's why it's romance. *&.^* (Care to guess what 'miedo' means?)  
  
V.V.C. (as utilized in the beginning of the sanitarium waiting room scene) is an acronym for 'Victims of Violent Crimes.' As the 'of' is not considered a major word (much as 'a,' 'an,' 'for,' and 'the' are not considered major words), it is neither capitalized nor given its own spoofy letter. I have no idea if V.V.C. is an actual term used in hospitals or sanitariums, but it sounds official and this is a piece of (science) fiction. My alibi, gentlemen. (And ladies.) The RN on Jessica's nametag stands for 'Registered Nurse,' an occupation my mom is reattending college for - because two degrees aren't enough already. They have a remarkably high level of power, as nurses go. Just short of doctor, I believe, and they have more hands on duty.  
  
Standard disclaimer applies. Distributed to www.FanFiction.net.  
  
Feedback is encouraged in the form of reviews and e-mails sent to alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. 


	3. Requiem: Discord

She clutched her knees under her chin, weeping without a sound in the grateful loneliness of her room, weaving her fingers into her blue hair, the muted fluorescent lights above catching the green highlights in it, dark greens obscured in the dark blues. Her palms grated her cheeks, melting into the slippery streams of tiny tears cascading from her eyes, the oceans spilling out in clear silver that coursed down her lower arms. Rain, she begged the room, begged whatever force was listening; make it rain, make it pour, make it take my feelings away. The pain under her breasts was numbing, bandages wrapped about her sewn gashes, the glass taken away by the doctor, removed from her rib cage as he gasped earlier, murmuring how lucky she was her heart had not been pierced, her lungs escaped unscratched. It did not matter, it was not raining, the doll was broken and gone, taken by the Man whose name she did not know, but she did not know what a name was anyway. Only Jessica-the-nurse had a name, she was trustworthy, but it still did not rain.   
  
Rain, she cried, rain is cold, rain is bliss. It takes away the pain and the longing and the evil desires for soft touches and kisses that do not bruise or scar, for a man who does not burn and laugh and shatter glass, those evil lusts for good things she does not deserve, for a man who would not want a bad girl like her. He told her those things, years of those words etched into her mind in the Book of Truths, and she felt a sea of sickness in her stomach, knowing in the darkest corner of her mind, the corner washed with light and innocence, things he said were the baddest of all because they corrupted her, she had trusted the Man she had seen, the man with beautiful hair and otherworldly eyes, and she needed the rain to wash away the badness of hope.   
  
Is it bad to hope, she wondered, and then she cried harder, fresher, always swept by the knowledge of the Book of Truths that she hated and trusted and rejected, and she wanted to see the Man, even if it was a bad thing to look at a man and not be afraid.  
  
She was crying slower an hour later, her legs dangling limply over the bed and her left hand, wrapped in crisscrossing tan gauze to hide and heal the melted, puckered skin stretching from her ring finger, was resting in her lap, right hand still woven into her thick, tangled hair, when Jessica-the-nurse returned, and touched her face with a soft, damp washcloth, cooing words that meant nothing.  
  
--  
Requiem: Discord  
--  
  
He couldn't get the image of her out of his mind. Aimee Cortez, small and thin, a living example of abuse, of the pain and evil he thought he had pushed from his mind years ago, thought he had forced himself to forget. She was a relic from the war he had been an integral part of, thrust into a misery no human deserved by the cold and desperation, forgotten and molded into the image of a sick bastard's dream. He, being privy to things others were not, knew the other women Cortez was seen with had been tall, willowy with long, golden white locks that twisted into buns, into braids, into coils and coil of silken strands, women with heavy breasts and shapely waists, thighs balanced at the perfect degree of sensuality, neither too thin nor too thick. There were photos kept locked in the file cases at the Preventers' archives, satellite and infrared, clippings from newspapers and the occasional professional photo stolen from offices by worried secretaries, and he found that it was tossing around in his mind, slithering and wrapping in on itself like a crazed labyrinth.   
  
Duo drummed his fingers against the tight, black leather of his steering wheel, gritting his teeth behind his dark lips as he drove the length of the colony, nearing the vast, sloping curve in the road that would send him on another five hour drive back along M-13's left side, moving without thought towards his apartment. She was compact, in a word, with small hips and thighs that would be trim if she were healthy, and he was able to picture what she would look like if nourished: tiny. So why would a man groom a girl to be silent and obedient that he could beat her all the easier? Why would he want her thin and short and pale when the whores he so used were the opposite? A thousand reasons ran through his head, insights into the human mind gained from years learning and practicing psychology, dancing the gauntlet from a perverted form of the Oedipus Rex syndrome, acting out sexual frustration from a lacking female role model growing up or a cruel mother, to some branch of the thick, stretching tree of schizophrenia.   
  
"Manic depression," he murmured, remembering the stir the media had made over her delicate wardrobe, the hundreds of thousands of gowns found in walk-in closets throughout the manor of a summer home, all silk and ivory, a sleek whiteness that he knew even Foreign Minister Dorlian would find exceptionally difficult to obtain. Trinkets had been all over the place, though the gowns had long since been confiscated for the laborious process of testing to find traces of blood or semen, bodily fluids that should not be there, when he had gone a few days past, in an attempt to form some sort of empathic connection with the victim he would work with. God, he'd made a connection all right, but not the way he'd wanted. "Manic depression," he repeated to himself, frowning and tucking an errant whip of brown hair behind his ear, his braid made somewhat buoyant by the artificial air whipping past his car as he pushed seventy, flicking his headlights on. The streamers of lights meant to mimic daylight were dimming gradually and he preferred to make it home without crashing.  
  
It had been obvious that Philip Cortez had abused his common law wife; she had bandages and bruises and a gauntness to her that all proved it if any doubted. He'd seen Anders carefully ply the cotton dress from her upper body, the moment before Jessica, RN, bullied him out of the room in a fit of motherly rage, seen the blood trickling down pale flesh, wavering over the strict lines of her ribs, leaking from under the gentle curves of breasts made thin by malnourishment. But the baubles that had been placed on every space in the manor had been expensive, European glass and the delicate craftsmanship that had existed for centuries, thrived for millennia, under the hands of the Arabic artisans, vases from the country that had replaced Thailand, statuettes and pagan goddesses erected about the place, all serene and sad, as if asking for forgiveness. "I wonder," he said in a quiet tone, wrinkling his strong nose under the sunglasses he was wearing, and he took them off with his spare hand in a flash of 'oh yeah' insight, "if he was…aw, Jesus!" He swore a second time, forcing his car to hit seventy-five and clenching his jaw in irritation.  
  
A thread of annoyance wove into his mind, silver and ghostly and still tangible, and he slammed his fist against the center of the wheel, letting his self-directed anger travel into the horn that exploded noisily into being before fading abruptly when he jerked his hand away, still seething somewhat at himself. "I could be thinking of a babe," he muttered to himself, "an incredibly sexy babe I happen to like very, very much, and instead, after already blowing off two other minor appointments I had today with patients, I'm stuck worrying about an anorexic kid nearly ten years younger than me." A guilty twinge struck his stomach and he ignored it steadily, used to dealing with such unwanted emotions, used to suppressing them and covering them smoothly over with a delicate, fooling mask of brevity and perfectly human, masculine vices.   
  
He let thoughts of Aimee slip from his mind like slick oil through a sieve, let his job and empathy swirl away into the desert he kept in the back of his mind, a coarse, burning memory where he hid the darker things in his mind, like caged monsters. She was placed there, in his mind, amongst the monsters snarling and curling behind their cage bars, and he could see her sit down carefully, resting on the sand and pulling her legs up to her chest once more, wrapping her arms around her shins and dropping her head on her cheek to the scabbed skin of her knee. Before the guilt could twine around his lungs, squeezing the breath from his body, he filled his mind with the glowing image of Mina, promising and bright and so very much like him. Her he could understand without thinking, obsessing over her for a half hour was never painful, never unwelcome. If anything, it was pleasurable, imagining the smooth curves of her happy nature, the sunny personality that attracted him like Hilde's had, and he was fine if the relationship with Mina, like the one with the German pilot, ended in a cozy, intimate friendship.   
  
Duo smiled at the thought and he eased the car back down to sixty-nine, cutting away into the lit darkness of the night.  
  
  
  
She touched her fingers to the cloth under her left breast, her movement muffled by the heavy quilt Jessica-the-nurse had placed on her before leaving her alone, alone in the horrible dark. To keep her mind off the memories of what was meant to be in the dark, she prodded gently at the clean bandage, feeling for any clear shrapnel the doctor might have left without knowing. There was pain, yes, whispering streaks of dagger swift agony that faded as soon as they were born, but none of the lingering burning of imbedded glass and she smiled, slightly, hesitantly, to herself, slowly moving her hand to the other side and repeating the careful process, her fingertips brushing over the exactly applied gauze and seeking for what she did not want to be there. Again, she felt no telling, steady pain, and she pulled her hand away, folding it in her other, the wrapped one encasing the seeking. She closed her dark ocean eyes, falling into the soothing black of her eyelids in place of the frightening, alien darkness of her cold room. Pulling her legs up, curving them into a loose fetal position, caused only a dull ache in her belly, one that was bearable and hateful at the same time, for the growth of comfort she could take in that motion meant the further away her beautiful, empty child was. Lowering her arms to her belly, she spread her fingers out into open hands that barely grazed the naked skin of her lower stomach, hovering a breath above the skin and touching it just so with her own warmth, as if to cradle to her heart the memory of what should have been.   
  
She thought of her baby, the infant that had grown inside of her, one she imagined to be like the babies she had seen on the days she was taken from the house, but with a fringe of soft blue hair, not the coarse, greasy hair of him, and sweet aqua eyes closed, with trims of dark eyelashes leaning against tender skin. A son, she thought to herself as tears pricked her eyes, dripping down her cheeks once they pushed past the dam of her eyelids, flowing over dark circles and tracing her cheeks. He had wanted a daughter, but she knew, she felt in her soul, in her heart, with every fiber of her life, that she was carrying a son, a lovely boy with pretty eyes and hair like long velvet, hair she could caress, a son to protect from him and show brilliant things to. Oranges, she thought dreamily, remembering from a faint day of years before, the tangy, exotic taste of a spongy, round fruit with a thick crust and pale yellow veins that stuck in her teeth, hanging like threads from her mouth. Oranges for her son, a hundred, but she felt he might take only one, knowing something can only be precious if it is rare, if it is secret. Nothing can be precious if it is seen by others, nothing.  
  
Lace doilies the color of deep, silver tainted amethyst, and never any dolls for him to stare at and fear and think he would be made into one like she had been. A convulsive shudder swept into her body, overcome by the imagined touch of thousands of male fingers, prodding and grabbing and choking and pulling, always hurting, bruising, shearing away her hair every time it began to brush her shoulders, thin strands stretching to touch her skin, forcing her to stay awake when she was a naughty girl so that she could not find sleep now. He would punish her, her mind whispered, the compulsion to clean, to find a place to hide, swelling up, taking control.   
  
Quiet, she thought in a weak command, sliding her legs from under the quilt, from over the squished swell of another lying below her, setting her feet on the rough rug lining the side of the metal table, and she flinched momentarily, instinctively, from the throbbing that the touch sent spiraling up her legs. For a few dangerous, muted minutes, she stood there, naked in the pervading dark and still, her breathing shallow when she finally began limping, slowly, to the door. This was not like the doors from the house, the ones that slid to the side, tucking away into the thick, boarded walls, and she brought up a clear image in her mind of Jessica-the-nurse grasping the silver bar that jabbed out of the smooth plastic coated metal of the door. Her fingers, the ones that were so pale in comparison to the dark peach of the sticky bandage swept around her flesh, tensed, uncurling carefully to touch the handle, wrapping about it in a mindfully paced manner to avoid pain. She turned the handle and pulled, pushed, moved to the side as she planted her feet as firmly to the ground as she dared, but the door did not move. Breathing, breathing, she thought of what he would say, what he would do, if he found her in the pitch of the hospital room, quivering by the door, trying to flee from him and trying to appease him.  
  
I can't clean in here, she cried wildly in her head, I can't clean and he'll punish me; let me out, let me out, let me out! And her hands struck the door without rhythm, careless and variant in the abrupt motions, one hand slapping harder than the other, for one was hurt and too sensitive to lash out carelessly. She kept pounding, harder and faster, casting about in her mind for someone who would come to let her out so she could clean.  
  
Her eyes were too dry for tears.  
  
  
  
"Golly gee whiz, Russell sure is a fun, go-go sort of guy, isn't he?" Mina commented in a cavalier tone to the dimly lit reception room in the V.V.C. section. Seven-frickin'-thirty-five, she fumed, crossing her arms as she stood before the front desk, tapping her foot in its leather clog angrily against the dirtied tile floor, made dusty by feet walking through and people stopping to visit. Her purse had long since been abandoned by her feet, tilted over on its muted orange side, and her hopes to use the money inside it after work were, yet again, dashed. Entertaining herself with wicked mental cartoons of Russell's girlfriend dumping him - assuming, of course, that he had one - and him losing that chrome motorcycle he was disturbingly proud of had been fun for the first thirty minutes he was late, but as she was just starting to wait out the fourth half hour following the official end of her day long shift, it was no longer amusing.  
  
Jessica had stuck around until seven-oh-five before booking and Mina highly doubted all but a few doctors or nurses had remained for the relatively boring evening shift, making sure a favored patient was taken care of. This was leading her into a mood of complete boredom, punctuated only by the tired guilt of considering leaving before she knew Russell was set and that bizarre pounding she'd been hearing for the past three minutes, drifting dully through the air vents and pumping into the areas outside of its origin point. "This," she gritted, "is - absolute - crap! God!" The pounding had paced itself faster a second time, knocking at a higher pitch and moving into a steadier rhythm of hard-soft-hard-soft-hard, and it, while a welcome break from the monotony of her after-shift twilight, was growing swiftly annoying. "Is nobody going to check on that?" questioned Mina incredulously, shifting her weight to her opposite leg as she swiveled on her hips, twisting around to stare fixedly at the sliver of hallway she could see from her angle, staring, eyebrows lowered dangerously, through the heavy glass window formed in the locked door. "For all they know, Dennis could have finally gone of the deep end!" Dennis being, she reminded herself, someone who was probably more or less not likely to act in an insane way, place of residence aside. Still, it was the basic principle that counted and, as far as she could tell, not a soul had stirred to check on the source of the thumping. There has to be someone here, she reasoned in her mind; it's got to be illegal for no registered doctors or nurses to be on duty, right?   
  
She lasted for ten more seconds before she growled at life in general and started kicking her purse around the semicircular mold of her/Russell's desk, punching it with her foot into hiding under the jutting platform of the desk that provided writing space. So unfair, she grumbled silently, leaning over to the bouncing screensaver of the computer and hurriedly tapping in a suitably complicated password, and she leaned back, trilling her fingers on her hip and watching with restraint as the door slid open, hissing softly in a wave of automated coolness.  
  
Stalking down the hallway in heeled clogs did a remarkable job at releasing anger directed at several different persons, and she followed the sound with a tuned ear, passing four rooms - two on each side - and stopping at what certainly sounded like the spot of origin.  
  
Room B-902.  
  
Strings of warnings and advice shot through her mind at rocket speed, colliding and meshing into incomprehensible bits that melted into her brain, and the only thing she could focus on was the remembrance of being told to make sure Aimee Cortez was kept safe, kept quiet, crazy people all around and Mina didn't know what to do, this wasn't her job so why was she reaching for the door, fiddling with the master key in her pocket that she was required to carry? She fit it in the door and, gently, with an air of trepidation, she pushed it open, feeling the soft-hard-soft vibrations whisper against her hand.  
  
The pounding was sliced off and a light weight moved off the door, stepping back in alarm as the golden-haired woman moved inside, feeling around the outside of the large white cell for the inner light and flicking it on. Inky pupils trimmed with a thin lace of dark blue contracted quickly, shrinking abnormally into smaller ellipses, and the girl blinked painfully, lifting her hands to touch them to her doe eyes. Her lips moved wordlessly, in mindless repetition, and Mina hastily thrust herself forward to grab a quilt from the double-purpose metal rectangle set high up in the room, pulling the sewn, stuffed cloth from its collapsed shelter, left by a body that slipped from it. She tossed it around the blue-haired girl and, in comforting caresses she had learned from her mother, she touched her shoulders, rubbing them gently.   
  
Something had shone in Aimee's eyes the instant before the pupils whittled down, something that had twisted Mina's heart in its familiarity: the birds she had cared for growing up had that same frightened look. They had broken wings, those birds, wings broken by nature or man or accident, and her mother had taught her how to mend those wings, how to treat the bird like a child and let them learn to fly a second time. She chided herself in the back of her head, a silly thing to think when she was holding a girl on the cusp of hyperventilation.  
  
Aimee sunk down in the quilt, dragging her meager weight backwards as she buried her head in the folds of the blanket, bringing to mind the 'out of sight, out of mind' adage. "Oh, sweetie," Mina started, her eyebrows curving up in pity as she began gently wrestling the slowly twining girl toward the flat table bed.   
  
The shrill ring of her cell-phone bubbling smashed apart the intentions of both young women, and the smaller of the two broke free, dropping to the floor like a lead ball, curling up into an indistinguishable lump under the dimpled surface of the quilt. Mina swore several times under her breath and dug into the pocket of her red slacks, whipping out the small gray square and flipping it open. "Of all the times," she exhaled, hitting the receive button.  
  
"What?" she demanded in a voice that was perhaps a bit too harsh and she winced in turn at a sarcastic reply that filtered as a low murmur to other ears. "No, no," she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in a subconscious plea for patience, "I'm not mad at you. What? Oh, I'm stuck at the V.V.C., no overtime pay. I didn't exactly volunteer for duty." A pause as she broke off, biting her lower lip and kneeling beside the bundle, reaching out with one hand to smooth out a wrinkle on the fabric. "No, Russell didn't have a stroke," she all but groaned, rolling her robin blue eyes, "there was a…disturbance in the B-section. Grow up! That is so typical of you, to think something like that. No, Aimee Cortez freaked and I'm trying to get her to calm down. Oh, for God's sake, I can take care of it. Look, I'll call you back, okay? I need to get someone to help in here, I sure don't know what to do."  
  
The phone was off then, clicked off with a beep and discontinued for the time being with another, and she slipped it back into the deep pocket of her pants, patting the lump once, almost reassuringly, before standing and exiting the room, calling loudly for someone to come.  
  
"Where's the guard?" she yelled. "And why the hell is Russell not here yet!"  
  
  
  
Duo eyed the simple cell-phone in his hand and decided it wasn't worth the headache he knew was developing, right in that spot behind his eyes that they always seemed to start at. Tossing the cell-phone to his right, he watched with satisfaction as it fell in a perfect arc through the plastic mini-hoop attached to the window leading to the small ledge of his apartment, landing safely on a ragged cushion. A sofa and an armchair, both centered around a coffee table with dents in it from booted feet crossing on top of it, a decent sized television set up behind it, on a wide bench, were the only pieces of furniture in the small den/living room and he grimaced at it, wondering, as he often found himself doing, why he didn't just rent a better apartment; he had the pay for it.  
  
"Ah, but then," he murmured, lifting a plastic shopping bag up with his arm as he angled his body around the small bar into his also small kitchen, "however would I manage to pay for the 'Romance of the Week' novels Sally so loves?" He dropped the bag off his wrist onto the counter, leaning over to the small vid-phone hooked up to the outlet conspicuously placed near the sink. Duo thumbed the circled O near the left corner, starting an automatic dial-up, and opened the bag, filching out a packaged doll and making a face at it in memory of the last role-playing doll's demise. The customary comics were thrown neatly across the few feet of his kitchen, landing unbalanced on the opposite counter beside his refrigerator, and a romance novel, complete with a blue circle on the leftmost corner proudly stating in Amazone BT, 'Romance of the Week,' was retreived from the foggy white depths of the bag and he grinned.  
  
"Duo," came a woman's voice, one made wry with secret knowledge, and he looked over his shoulders quickly, worrying that he'd left something incriminating out in the open. The vid image of Sally raised a pale gold eyebrow and he smiled sheepishly, adding a tinny wave to complete the visual she would receive. She snorted, narrowing her ice eyes and running a hand through the thick curls trailing on either side of her head.   
  
"Before you ask, O Mighty and Magnificent One," he cut in quickly, sensing a wave of disapproval emanating from her, "I purchased your copy of 'The Duchess of Fire.'" He grinned maliciously at the sudden flush in her cheeks and the way she, too, checked the area around her, to ensure her somewhat close-minded husband couldn't catch wind of what she had asked the self-styled God of Death to pick up for her on the way back to his apartment.   
  
"Is it good?" she asked finally, sure that Wufei was nowhere to be seen - both a good and a bad thing, as it meant conversations about juicy romance novels were a fifty-fifty chance now. He granted her a look that asked in a way words never could, However would I know? "Don't try to pull that crap," Sally said bluntly, cutting straight to the quick, a habit that had probably endeared Wufei to her. "I happen to be one of three people that know about your subscription to 'Romance of the Week.' That's also not counting the romantic westerns stacked in the bottom of your closet, the various tattered copies of 'Gone with the Wind' scattered throughout your apartment, the--"  
  
"I sense the pattern," Duo pointed, his grin a little more self-indulgent now. "I can't help it if I'm not as manly as Wufei, with his pristine copies of 'The Art of War' on every inch of available space in your guys' house." His grin widened again, turning a bit devilish. "He'd never be caught reading a 'Romance of the Weak.'" It took Sally all of three seconds to catch the pun and she scowled at him, shaking her head and still smirking a little.  
  
"But, in any case," shrugged Duo, leaning his elbows on the counter and replacing her newly purchased copy of 'The Duchess of Fire' with his slightly bent copy, "I think my favorite part was," he flipped swiftly through the pages, sticking his finger in the way when he found the spot. Clearing his throat, he repeated the last bit, and then read, with much gusto, "'As Marie watched, her heart pounding slowly, hungrily in her throat, he raised his head, licking his lips, from--'"  
  
"Shut up," the woman interrupted, her cheeks a definite rosy color.  
  
"From shut-up?" he echoed, sticking his tongue out cheekily. "You and I both know Quatre subscribes to the same romances I do, and he doesn't do it for his wife, either. You're such a prude, Mrs. Chang."  
  
"And you are not very high on my 'People I Like' list," Sally retorted, folding her arms over her chest, obscuring the faded hard rock t-shirt she was wearing with her jeans. "While I'd love to stick around and chat about romances, I don't have the time. You're going to go back to work tomorrow, to all of your appointments in the order they were scheduled for today. You will be social and friendly to Aimee Cortez in particular, and you are not to do anything like you did this morning. Wufei found out from Mina," here it was Duo's turn to snort, "what happened and he, of course, told me around noon, which ruined my lunch, and guess who I was eating it with? Your commanding officer, no less." Sally leaned forward, her eyes a deadly cold that had, on past occasion, served her well in many situations others had thought a woman could not finish. "Kino is going to have your ass."  
  
"Damn," he sighed, and the link went out. He stared darkly at the screen, slowly reaching for the fresh copy of the book and stuffing it back into the bag. With a resigned air, he turned his attention back to Marie's slow, hungry heart.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: It wasn't as long as I wanted it to be, but it is six pages (and that's oversized for a story by me). How do people like Priscilla-san write 30+ page chapters without having a coronary or something? Insane.  
  
Many thanks to my five reviewers, Girl-chama (I always love it when you review! I admire your stories so much and you write such awesome reviews), UNgoddess (who guessed a plot point and forced my hand...*sulky look* How'd you know Sally was going to scold Duo? And, yeah, the doctor-patient thing is going to figure into the story; been planning it since the start), Michelle Ann/Myst Lady (I think that different is good, right? *Angst* is good...so long as fluff and obscene amounts of chocolate follow), Kaiya-chan (you didn't have to review, you know...not that I'm complaining, of course, it's always nice to hear compliments from your beta-reader...*winks*), and WindRider-Damia (I hope I don't get flamed! Although, with me being pro-Relena in a mostly anti-Relena zone, I might get flamed later on...thanks for your comments and here's two new chapters in one update!). They made me feel warm and fuzzy and introspective. Which is usually a good thing. (My apologies to any other reviewers; at the time this was written, I only had five. Thank-you!)  
  
Girl-chama brought up an interesting point. I'm hoping this won't take away from whatever you might learn (or be inspired to learn) from this story, but I have never personally been abused, physically, sexually, or verbally. If anything, I'm drawing on far too many casual viewings of Forensic Files on Discovery Channel, my own disgust for rape, and an experience one of my friends had to live through. She was the victim of incest rape (her father sexually abused her several times as a child and as an adolescent), and her family moved as soon as they managed to get him convicted and in jail. For reasons of security, I haven't heard from her in four years and I like to believe she's doing much better. So, while I haven't suffered in that way, I have known several people who have. If any of that made sense...but don't worry. :] Always remember to hope! Hope pays in this story...  
  
I'm hoping to be able to post a new chapter (or two) every Monday, with the possibility of an update on a Friday every so often. Oh! Before I forget…I owe a great deal to Kaiya-chan, who agreed to be my beta-reader even though I forgot to e-mail her about a different story for months. *weepy face* Sorry…  
  
Standard disclaimer applies to this chapter, too. Also distributed to www.FanFiction.net and wherever available on Saturn's ninth ring.  
  
I encourage feedback happily and with picket signs, so please drop a line - rude, insightful, or bizarre - to my fic via the bar below or by e-mailing me at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. 


	4. Requiem: Bolero

He loved watching her when she was sleeping as much as he loved watching her when she was talking. She was so very beautiful, so stunningly perfect that imperfections were merely a compliment to the natural grace instilled into her blood, the lovely result of years of careful Japanese breeding, with long ebony hair, just a tint of violet to it, hanging over skin that was pale from some ancient Western ancestor, skin that tanned easily in warm weather and would stay tan. Beautiful, perfect flaws. The tiny impression of fingernails pressing against a small dark spot on her forehead, the nails she could never keep even, the way her eyes never seemed to be calm, at peace. Had they truly only been married for a year? It seemed at times to him that their courtship had lasted for an eternity he would never trade, their marriage one that could never fade. But it was so very difficult to say those things to her, when he knew how she distrusted poetic words, flowery intentions, and it was crushing to know he couldn't do what other men would hesitate to do.   
  
Quatre sighed and touched his lips to her tan cheek, letting his skin touch hers for a moment, feeling the strong heat that flowed from her summer-warm body. He loved arguing with her as well, loved watching her when her violet black eyes spit fire and her personality emerged from the layers of cool, detached beauty her father had told her men desired. She was a spitfire, opinionated and passionate, sarcastic and verging on insensitive, and he knew that was what had attracted him to her in the first place, the one time he had seen her fighting with a suitor her father had chosen. Tall, dark, and handsome, he thought, discarding the fact it was an obvious cliché. "I don't think I'm what your father had in mind," he murmured against her cheek, smelling the husky scent that was hers. "I'm certainly not what I would have thought you would want." He sighed unhappily, stroking her arm gently through the red satin of her nightgown, his pale European-Arabic hand in direct contrast with the slick crimson. He hated being the one considered feminine in personality, hated being the one always expected to surrender first, to obey, and he hated it always twisting against him so he could not tell her he loved her, because she did not want to hear it. Can't tell you, he whispered in his mind, that I was in the wars, a pilot of a machine of death…destroyer of colonies. She didn't even know of his mental imbalance, the horrible things extreme stress could do to him: he would lash out uncharacteristically, snarl and attack instead of turning and apologizing.  
  
"Why are you crying?" he heard Rachelle ask, felt her slender fingers touch his cheek with a rare warmth and turn his blue eyes to her. The touch, on a physical level, was not foreign, but the kindness behind it was different from the usual calm atmosphere she tried to exude. Her fingertip picked up a tear and she brushed it aside, smearing a glittering streak across his face to below his earlobe.  
  
"For no reason at all," he smiled, eyes obscured by the glimmer of wetness layering over them, and he was surprised, but not displeased, when her hand began to burn against his skin, fingers weaving into his hair and pulling his face down to her lips. He paused when she paused, feeling her dark, luminescent eyes on him, and he heard a soft noise, like a keen, in the back of his throat, and he whispered, "Rae," before she touched his mouth to hers.  
  
--  
Requiem: Bolero  
--  
  
"Quatre," she shook his shoulders sternly, leaning over her husband in the bed they now shared, "would you mind waking up? We do have things that need to be done today." Her tone was cool, layering over the impatience her eyes flashed, and he groaned into his pillow, nuzzling his face deeper into the misshapen depths. His hand snaked out and latched onto her wrist, pulling her unceremoniously from her stance beside the bed and sprawling her halfway on him. "Idiot!" she spat, momentarily forgetting the lessons taught by her father, and he laughed quietly, slim shoulders quivering in delighted amusement. Her cheeks burned as she recalled how he, in one of his few quirks, enjoyed seeing her angry. "Honestly," Rachelle strove for some semblance of dignity as she managed to wriggle and crawl off of him to her side of the bed, her crimson brocade gown bunching up at her knees, "I can't be nice to you once without you trying to take advantage of me in the morning." She sniffed haughtily, all an intricate show and he smiled softly, and her long hands smoothed out the folds made in her skirt before they could wrinkle into place. "Besides, I've already gotten my dress and make-up on."  
  
He sat up slowly, letting the sheet slip to his lap, and he leaned to peck her cheek innocently, emerald green eyes all but glowing. "I'm very sorry, Rae," said Quatre sweetly, latticing his hands together as he pulled his knees, and the white sheet, up, tilting his head to one side in a purposefully cute movement. "I won't ever try to be amorous again."  
  
Her cheeks grew even darker and she pursed her lips disapprovingly. "Foreign Minister Dorlian and her family are arriving today at noon," she responded in a tone that was completely business, pointedly ignoring him as he plucked his shirt from the floor and tugged it on over his head, "and I've asked Tanya to make that Italian dish she likes - fettuccini with that authentic sauce? And garlic bread, maybe some flavored ice for a small dessert. Of course, there will be other courses, but I made sure to request those specifically." He glanced up from tugging on some shorts that would last until he had to pull on the more formal wear the meeting would require and was a bit surprised, and mildly disappointed, to find she had stepped off the bed, running her finger down an electronic schedule. She tapped her finger against one of the choices listed and firmly deleted it, scanning the rest of the list swiftly and setting the flat object on the small bedside table, beneath a sleek antique lamp, one she had selected the other week. "What the hell are you doing?" she asked pointedly as he flipped through the various shirts she had set out, his face drawing into a worried expression.   
  
"Where's my green polo?" he replied in that meek voice he used when he was upset or trying to get something he wanted, fluidly choosing the brown slacks from among the pants stacked on the arched chair positioned by the walk-in closet. Turning back to the bed in the center of the large, airy room, he cast a helpless look in her direction, navigating around the dresser pushed against the wall near the closet. "I was going to wear that."  
  
She ignored his helpless look with admirable strength and instead stalked over to the chair he had abandoned, lifting a black button-up from the top and handing it to him with a forceful flourish. "For God's sake," Rachelle said in a voice that brooked no argument, "you're twenty-eight years old! Don't you think you're a little old for that?"  
  
Quatre's lips drooped a bit and she narrowed her eyes dangerously, leaning over to pull meaningfully at the rumpled shirt he had on, tugging up with it. "Rae!" he protested, face reddening, and he shoved away from her hands, clutching at the front of his shirt and stepping back. "I can get dressed on my own."  
  
"Of course, dear," she replied in a saccharine tone, landing a quick kiss on his chin before sweeping about on her heel and clicking across the floor. The wide double-doors, carved from browned oak, closed behind her and his soulful face turned to mild sadness. He tugged the shirt over his head and shrugged the open button-up on his shoulders, shifting it up his arms and tucking the cuffs comfortably.  
  
Standing outside the bedroom she shared with her husband of thirteen months, she placed her hands on her lower abdomen, smoothing her fingers along the cloth clinging to her skin as she sought to ease the mild nausea stirring inside of her. She had yet to tell him of her pregnancy, feeling a sense of discomfort every time she tried to, one that was not caused by morning sickness, which was yet a week or two away according to the medical texts she had been poring over while he was at his office. Something was coming, something that was undetermined. Premonitions were an old gift of hers, like his empathy was for him, and she was used to knowing if the results would be good or bad, but this was neither. It unsettled her, frightened her, and she felt her stomach with her palms, as if to soothe the child forming within. "I will tell him later," she near-whispered determinedly, and the usual wave of stubborn emotions shook away any feelings of illness, swamping over her mind. Creasing her fingers up into arches, she tentatively pushed, very lightly, at the flat slope of her abdomen, wondering at what was to come, trying to imagine what it would feel like to have the added weight that would remind her constantly of her son or daughter. Probably a daughter, she thought with a secretive smile, if Quatre's twenty-nine sisters are anything to go by. Although, of course, one had to take into account that the whole group of thirty Winner children were test tube babies, so it was possible that she might have a son. "It's not important," she told their forming child, her voice intentionally pitched low so her beloved might not overhear, "so long as you are mine and you are his. Which I am prone to think you are." She laughed, a light sound, rare for coming from her, and looked down the length of the intricate hallway leading away from the door.  
  
The door that was inching open at her back, and she respectfully moved forward, turning about slightly and planting her hands in a move of intimidation, squarely hooking her fingers on her hips. Quatre smiled in the doorway, hooking his belt into place and looking as adorably sophisticated as he could, reminding her of his dual, yet interlocked nature, both naive and intelligent at once. "Am I presentable?" he questioned, slowly pivoting around, and she smiled not unkindly, moving forward to check the folded collar of his shirt and to run her fingers through his hair, flexing strands in a certain direction, perhaps to excuse the affectionate action. His smile turned into soul-filled shyness and she mock-scowled.  
  
"I'm going to make sure Tanya has finished setting up lunch," informed Rachelle, tugging and patting down his collar before moving in graceful motions down the hall. Having no other direction to turn to, he glanced out the tall Gothic windows on either side of the small landing linking bedroom to hallway and swept after her, absently fiddling with his silver-laced wedding band. Red-painted doors speckled the hallway, forming a total of ten beneath the arching ceiling, also Gothic in design.  
  
"I thought you said the Dorlian family was going to arrive at noon," he reminded her, rolling his sleeve back a bit to check the quartz face of his leather watch, "and it's only...a quarter 'til twelve." He blinked reflexively and colored slightly, pulling his sleeve back into place and feeling unbalanced. "Why did you wake me so late?"  
  
"You were sleeping and I figured it wasn't worth it," she replied bluntly, foregoing mentioning the fact that she had been loathe to disturb him when he looked so peaceful. It really wasn't that important to mention. "And as I've already seen that everything has been set up - guest wing, lunch, planning supper, and et cetera - it isn't as if you've failed at playing host." She paused as they reached the massive doors that would open into the main portion of the house, the several large rooms that formed the center, and she gave him a bittersweet smile, the kind preceding an echo of her father's many lessons from the past. "After all, the woman is in charge of making sure the house is kept in working order."  
  
Rachelle strove to banish the image of his wounded face from her mind, assuming it would pass from his mind soon enough. She knew something he did not, after all, and that something was trying to reign in her overtly active twins from causing serious damage to rather expensive objects scattered tastefully throughout the house. Quatre stopped, blinked reflexively for the second time that day, and smiled brightly at the small family seated, or, in the case of two small boys, bouncing, in the extensive living/seating room. "Relena!" he beamed, and the stately blonde woman, her handsome face bright with a smile, stood up to give him a swift hug, one that he returned. "You're early!"  
  
"Well," she began, giving Rachelle a quick hug and reciprocating the elegant smile the lady Winner gave her, "the shuttle landed early and we called to ask if it would be all right if we arrived earlier than we had originally planned, and Rae said it was hardly any trouble at all, though I'm sure she regrets that by now," a pointed look was delivered in the direction of the two swarthy boys wrestling dangerously close to a large china cabinet. Mentally, Rachelle made a note to have the china and other breakables moved to a small, locked room when her child was born. The dark arm of Noce Huntson-Dorlian descended from the edge of the hand-stitched sofa and easily hauled up one boy, followed by his twin, by the back of his shirt, plopping both unceremoniously beside their father.   
  
Noce was the opposite of Relena, tall and with dark brown skin, his black hair curled tightly against his skull, cut short. His smile was easier than his wife's, a slash of pearly white that was simultaneously dashing and protective, and he stood carefully, making sure his lanky, strong frame didn't overturn anything. His offered hand was shaken by both Quatre and Rachelle, and he sat back down quickly, as if afraid he might break some of the more delicate items placed uncomfortably close to both him and the twins. "Shane," Noce said gently, his deep voice rumbling slightly, "Alex." The twins, both with curly hair a shade of dark gold and hazel eyes, rolled those hazel eyes tellingly and started elbowing each other, Alex's blue shirt inching up his rib cage and Shane's red shirt wrinkling in a resigned matter.   
  
"Boys," Relena said in an exasperated voice, arching a wheat colored eyebrow in a silent promise, and they settled down, adopting guilty, apologetic looks.  
  
"We're very sorry, Misterquatreraberbawinnersir," Shane rushed, throwing the end together into a sulky one-word epitaph for the sentence.  
  
"We promise never to do it again, Missus Rachelle, ma'am," Alex added dutifully, his voice far more polite than his brother's. A wicked grin crossed his face before they could be forgiven, though, and he continued cheerfully, "Besides, it was mostly Shane's fault." A swift punch to Alex's thigh ensued, courtesy of an angry Shane, and Noce flowed to his feet once more, grasping a boy's shirt in each hand and lifting them from the couch. "Mama!" Alex cried, startled, and Shane windmilled in the air, still determined to beat his brother senseless. "Tell Daddy to put us down!"  
  
"Before I'm forced to commit underage homicide," Noce started pleasantly, his lopsided smile once more decorated his lean face, "could you please direct me to our rooms? I'd hate for such a lovely home to be cordoned by police tape."  
  
"To the left and through the blue doors," Rachelle filled in as Quatre tried to figure out where she had arranged for them to be. "The guest wing has eleven rooms, as do all the other wings, but you're the only guests we have at the moment. Iria Winner will be here tomorrow, though, so you have first choice of rooms."  
  
Noce inclined his head in thanks and strode out of the room, winding around shimmering tables of glossy oak and redwood, still holding his sons firmly. "They're such a handful," Relena sighed, rubbing her hand over her face in the weary, timeless motion of all overwhelmed mothers. "I swear I have the highest maintenance seven-year olds in the known universe."   
  
"No argument here," Rachelle responded dryly, motioning for the smaller woman to sit down once more, as she and Quatre, in unconscious unison, sat down together in perfect rhythm, along the sofa facing the one the Foreign Minister was on. She gave them a knowing look and heat blossomed in Quatre's face for the countless time in the past twenty-four hours. "You needed to ask Quatre something," she reminded, cutting straight to the point. She could be remarkably tactless when she wanted, he admired privately, taking that pebble of knowledge and placing it into his heart.  
  
"Yes," she sighed, fingering the shoulder-length strands of her hair in a nervous gesture before slapping her hands lightly against her knees. "I assume you both know about the Cortez scandal."  
  
"Of course," Quatre nodded as Rachelle commented in playful sarcasm, "How could we not?"  
  
"Obviously," Relena tacked on sardonically, "what with the media blitz and how the tabloids are going at it like rabid sharks. Look, the problem is that, other than the fact that the Preventers are responsible for helping the bastard's wife, poor dear, we - we being the Preventers, myself for sponsoring them, and pretty much anyone and everyone politically active - hit the tip of the iceberg." She paused to let them think over that just as she tried to form what she would say next. "Cortez was a drug dealer, as we all know, and a nasty one at that. He was a murderer, a rapist, a pedophile, and so on.   
  
"We've also recently learned that he was a low-ranking member of a much larger criminal organization. Duo," she smiled as Quatre grinned and Rachelle snorted, "is working with Cortez's wife, dubbed 'Aimee' because of her apparent French-Irish descent, and Miss Kino will be letting him know he needs to find out whatever information he can from her. If," her tone grew affectionately sarcastic, "he manages to not scare her off with inappropriate advances. Heero contacted me with the idea of asking you for help."   
  
"What?" Quatre said, his voice still respectful, and Rachelle touched his hand lightly.   
  
"Things aren't looking good," Relena furthered quietly. "Noin and Une both agree with Heero and I that you'd be the best choice for helping. You've been an inactive member of the Preventers for a while and you happen to be one of the brightest minds alive, on Earth or in space, as your political and personal activities have shown. We're not talking about reactivating the Zero system," Rachelle's hand covered Quatre's in a show of concern, her eyes flickering as she saw his face blanch, the skin around his mouth and eyes tightening uncharacteristically, "but we need your help."  
  
A moment of silence followed and Rachelle's breath was silent, as was her husband's, but she could feel the tension in his body, the sudden wash of calculated fury, and it seemed, for that soundless, breathless moment, like he was a different entity, as if a new personality had entered his body, dark and consuming and hateful.   
  
"Ask again later," she said quickly, moving her hand off of his and wrapping her arm over his shoulder, pulling his face stiffly to her shoulder as she gravitated her body toward his. "I don't think now is a good time."  
  
"Yes," Relena said in a hollow tone, and Rachelle felt it settle in her gut, the knowledge that Relena was more than aware of what was happening to Quatre but was not allowed to tell her. She had seen that haunted face before, heard that hollow voice, from others he was close to, from the four men that he treated like brothers, from a few of his vast amount of sisters, always followed by hasty excuses, hasty departures.   
  
He did not trust her with this, she felt, as she watched Relena quietly leave the room, moving to take her bags from the entrance hall somewhere nearby. He did not trust her, he would not tell her, and she could not relegate that fact as another example of the flaws of men. Her father's sexist views and his ignorance of her opinions had never hurt like this, nor had the heartless sexual advances of suitors who cared about her body and her power more than Rachelle herself. "You never did," she whispered to Quatre, feeling as if her heart was breaking. "I was always a woman to you in the highest sense, treated with a respect that was true, something no one else gave to me. And I know you love me and will give me everything I ask for, but you will not give me your trust." He shivered under her arm, mouthing soundlessly over her neck, and she felt the wetness of fresh tears slipping slowly down her collar, tracing along the dips and slopes of her skin. "Whatever darkness you have, give it to me," she soothed, moving her other arm around him, pressing her palm against his back and twisting it in slow circles. "I am the warrior and you are the peacemaker."  
  
"I'll hurt you," he mumbled before a litany exploded from his lips, shaking his body with tears, and she missed every word, though she knew he was apologizing. People, she reminded herself, always speak in their native tongue when they are upset, and so she let her betrayal hurt inside of her chest as she listened to his musical Arabic.  
  
  
  
He found her after supper, standing bare foot in the sprawling back lawn with her glistening dark hair cascading down the open back of her wafting dress, her shoes discarded beside one another on the stone patio. The stars and the iridescent orb of the Earth shone above through the thick, protective glass coating the colony, catching her body in a humming, silvery light that so opposed her sun-like nature, but the duality of it merely made her that much more lovely. Tendrils of her hair were caught by the circulating air of the colony, twisting about in glittering waves, and he sighed, leaning against the marble arcs set as a boundary around the patio, a small opening leading to the lawn she was on, her feet engulfed by the fresh grass. Her fingers lifted an arrow from the quiver forced into the spongy earth, slipping it in place on the simple bow and pulling the crystal string back in a smooth movement, and she released it without a single word of acknowledgement. She was a powerful shot, her arrow striking the red center of the target pinned to a withered tree in the forefront of the line of trees surrounding the estate.   
  
"Rae," he said helplessly, sensing the hopeless rage directed at herself, at him, at nothing, and she calmly placed another arrow along the bow, wooden shaft fitted over her finger, as she turned smoothly to face him, the point of the triangle aimed a few degrees to the left of his face. Dread and some other unknown emotion swirled in the pit of his stomach.  
  
"Do you trust me?" Rachelle demanded, her legs a creamy light brown, exposed by a slight slit in the skirt of her dress. Her dark eyes were blazing, flickering and devouring their own heated light, reflecting the muted lights of the house back at him. He could hear, distantly, the Dorlian family laughing inside, with their light mother and dark father and crazed children, but it was another world.   
  
"Yes," Quatre said as strongly as he could manage, and she narrowed those burning eyes, her slender eyebrows tilting downwards in cruel disappointment. A soft, rushing sound filled his ear and he flinched, moving to the right as the arrow streaked several inches from where his head had been, clattering lifelessly against the smooth, tanned white concrete used to make the immense mansion. It fell to the ground, to the stones, and he felt his heart plummet. You fail, a voice, that of himself, whispered in his head; you fail you fail you fail.   
  
She let the bow drag her arm down to her side, let the slender, curved wood rest against her obscured thigh. Staring at him, like an ancient pagan queen, beautiful and untouchable and filled with a fire that the wind fed just as it played with her hair, casting strands across her face and waving the rest over her shoulder, she repeated the question, gently, "Do you trust me?"  
  
"No," he whispered, forcing it through his lips like a curse, and she smiled sadly, emptily.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: *laughs nervously* Not too sure how many people will like this chapter…but! There were a few plot points in the above and I kind of like it. As for the pairing being QuatrexRei...I usually prefer Quatre/Makoto and I've developed a fondness for Heero/Rei, but, for some reason, I wanted to write Quatre and Rei as a couple. It has great chemistry, though, if you think about it; they have enough differences and similarities to fit smoothly. Isn't that neat? *nimbly sidesteps blunt objects being hurled at her, thereby nimbly sidestepping into a wall*   
  
I have now at least mentioned the four Senshi I wanted to have in this story: Aimee (Ami), of course, being the female protagonist, Mina (Minako) as the secretary/Duo's current girl (emphasis on 'current'), Rachelle (Rei) Winner (read the above), and the elusive Ms. (Makoto) Kino (mentioned twice by name, now, with an appearance in an upcoming chapter). Handy, no? Don't worry about Makoto being shorthanded; she has a very fun role that I rescued from the wreckage of a different Duo/Ami fanfic that thankfully was trashed before I could post it (ironically, I started that one and trashed it the same day I started 'Requiem'). And, for the first time in my life, I'm actually seriously considering the possibilities of Makoto/Trowa. No thanks to Girl-chama…*mutters gratefully* And, of course, a very large thank-you to Kaiya-chan for being such a fabulous beta-reader. I've fixed mistakes in all four parts, ma'am! (And thank-you for pointing out the 'by'-'according to' thing. The sentence really didn't sound right to me until you suggested I replace one with the other. Arigatou!)  
  
As for this chapter...I have a theory, based on several different sources, that the Zero system's effects are not a temporary thing, but can have a permanent result. Whereas in Heero's case he was already prone to aggressive action, Quatre seems more likely to behave in a darker manner during stressful situations, as if he has a different personality that emerges. I kept Rei's premonitions because it's fun and will play a role, and, besides, if Quatre's an innate empath, why can't she have mild ESP or whatever? And I know Quatre isn't a test tube baby, but last I knew, he still thought he was, so the public opinion in the AC world is that the Winner children were all scientifically produced. Let's hear it for science and weirdness! As for Relena's husband and children, it's somewhat unrealistic to think her relationship with Heero would end in marriage (although it is possible). Not only were they teenagers when they were fixated on one another, but it just doesn't fit well in the setting of this fanfic. Isn't Noce a sweetheart, though? I have suspicions that I might have based Alex and Shane somewhat on my favorite literary twins ever...no, not Fred and George of 'Harry Potter,' but Samneric (Sam and Eric) of 'Lord of the Flies.' Their family name being 'Dorlian' instead of Noce's surname of 'Huntson' is in reference to politics: with Relena being such an active politician from a young age, changing her name could cause confusion (don't ask me why, but it's true). And Noce is such a nice guy, it didn't bug him at all. *winks*  
  
On a sadder note, I'd like to dedicate this chapter to Jager, my family's beloved black Labrador. He was a beautiful dog, emblazoned with a white star on his chest, and he was five months from celebrating his fifth birthday when he died of unknown causes. He is…was the sweetest animal I have ever known and he did not deserve dying, and I'd like to think God let him into heaven. He most certainly had a soul. My brother, who saw him die, and my mother, who was Jager's mother-by-heart, I also dedicate this chapter to. Amen.  
  
Standard disclaimer more or less applies to 'Bolero,' even if I'd prefer less. Distributed to www.FanFiction.net and selected locations on Saturn's ninth ring. Coming to a Plutonian holo-zine near you. Prayers are distributed on the side to the families who lost loved ones in the Columbia disaster.  
  
Feedback is both encouraged and enjoyed; review or drop a line at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. Compliments, criticism, offers to post the fic elsewhere, and marriage proposals accepted.  
  
(Smaller note: I would appreciate it if choice words weren't shared with me about my being pro-Relena. *winks* Purty please?) 


	5. Requiem: Overture

Folding the quilt occupied her hands, gave her freedom from thoughts that would otherwise fill her mind and obsess her soul, taking control of her every motion and thought. A simple tuck and twist and push, and the quilt was bent in half, bent in fourths, eighths, and it refused to bend again, though she tried as hard as she could. Apprehension filled her mind where rhythmic work could no longer, taunting her with lies and truths and lies that were truths, and she shivered in the new frock the other nurse, the one she remembered talking to the room of shifting, murmuring people, had given her, frightened to look down because it was so very white. She knew, in her head, that she was going to be punished now, punished for screaming and disobeying the Man and letting the glass be taken from her skin, and she tried to press the quilt into smaller squares it could not, would not, conform to, wondering if she might be able to escape the pain.   
  
What would he do to her, she wondered as she fought the blanket for control, striving for perfect sixteenths. Would he use glass to rip the fresh bandages wrapped about her torso? Or would he just use his hands, those large hands that were bigger and longer than he-always-watching's had been, to beat her and hold her down as the white turned red and pink? He had such pretty eyes, like cloudy amethysts, glittering with cheer and mischief, but she had seen eyes like that before, eyes that turned cold and hateful as soon as she let her guard relax, though she had never seen eyes that beautiful color before. Revulsion whipped through her stomach, a spiked cord that tore at her balance and her vision, threatening to topple her over the stubborn blanket.   
  
She was not to think of men in such a way, she whispered to herself noiselessly, never ever ever. Especially not the Man who was coming to remind her of what the Book of Truths had always taken care to assure her of, and she loosened her grip on the quilt as she waited for the other nurse to bring in the Man, watching with frightened, broken eyes as it sprang slowly from sixteenths to eighths to fourths to halves.  
  
--  
Requiem: Overture  
--  
  
He was in the round kitchen on the ground floor of their highly maintained house, scrubbing furiously at the dishes that had lain in mocking reminder of a few untidy habits in the sink, now sunk beneath the snarling white foam of bubbling soap. His motions were sharp and unforgiving, wringing punishment out on whatever crusted food had once coated the glazed porcelain, snapping the steel wool over and over it. Sally was somewhat surprised to find he had no flames in his eyes and was a bit amused at her curiosity to know where he had stowed his katana as he wreaked justice upon the remnants of last Friday's take-out, musing to herself that it was only Tuesday. He wasn't usually this obsessed with cleaning the dishes until Thursday, on what had come to be known as 'Duo's-Coming-Over-Buy-Lots-of-Food' night, or, as Wufei referred to it sullenly, 'Get-the-Damn-Phonebook-We're-Ordering-Fast-Food.'   
  
"Something wrong?" she asked mildly, rolling her shoulders under her faded black t-shirt and smiling half-heartedly when he grunted in response. Filching the front of the newspaper neatly organized into sections on the dinette table, she swerved around a jutting counter and came to stop beside the sink, watching carefully as he threatened to scour her favorite blue plate beyond all recognition. "It's five in the morning," she informed in a light voice. "And unless the ghost of Christmas past decided to get rid of heated plumbing, somebody used up the hot water for this morning." Wufei grunted a second time, in the time honored tradition of upset men, and moved on to Saturday's gluey lasagna, steadily annihilating the crimson colors and streaks of pasta white.   
  
"You're upset," she noted, running a smooth hand through her tangled gold hair, fingernails snagging on a few small, tight knots and tugging through. "Feel like sharing?" The lasagna disappeared into the foam and the plate joined its cleaner companions on the drying rack, waiting to be run through a second time and cleaned thoroughly.  
  
"Problems at work," he finally admitted in a guttural tone, turning coal eyes toward her in reluctant surrender, something he rarely did. "Of the cranky homicidal asshole variety." Death came swiftly to the solidifying syrup of Sunday breakfast, rubbed off with hard strokes of the steel wool, and he lifted the steel wool, staring at the clumps of food entrenched in its silver curls and dropping it into the water with a scowl.   
  
"Want to tell me?" she suggested carefully, striding across the burnished tiles of the floor to a small, brown cabinet in the corner. Opening the smooth cabinet, she fished out a pale green box of mandarin tea, shaking it thoughtfully and smiling at the soft swishing sounds that emanated from it. A curved metal teapot was placed on the burner nearest to her, switching the stove on to heat the cooled water that had rested within it for the evening. A teacup, plain and unadorned, found its way next to the burner, and she turned around to face him as he, in turn, moved, crossing his arms over his sweater.   
  
"Not really," he smiled slyly, and she nodded in acceptance, yawning. She figured she'd get him later, when he had his tea and she had enough adrenaline coursing through her body to take him on.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"I don't wanna," Duo mumbled into his pillow, burying his light brown face deeper into the plush, misshapen depths and doing his best to ignore the shrill screaming of the alarm clock flashing '6:01' at him. Cruelty, he thought absently, thy name is early mornings. His hand flailed out from under the comforter in wide, vague motions, occasionally slapping down in quest of silence, and he smiled in pure satisfaction when he managed to pound his palm atop the round button that sent the ringing into oblivion. He snuggled deeper into the pleasant warmth of his small bed, eyelashes steadily held on his shadowed cheeks as he breathed evenly, idly fingering away the thin twist of brown hair circling his neck and sighing contentedly. Distantly, he could hear his answering machine click on from its careless position on a stool around the general vicinity of the most beloved of all technologies, the refrigerator, and he whined mentally at the unfairness of reality intruding every time he had finally attained some form of peace.  
  
"DAMN IT, MAXWELL!" a scream echoed throughout the house and he bolted up right, nearly rolling off his bed as he clutched at his ears, wincing audibly at the sheer unexpected loudness of the voice recording at the moment. His large violet eyes flickered toward the door and he stared at it in a mixture of horror and chagrin, fully aware that he couldn't answer the vid-phone in his current state: unshaven, long hair an untidy mess, and clad in his tanktop and boxers. He suspected Kino would not only berate him verbally, she would hitch a cab from the M-13 branch office to personally kick him in the rear for insubordinate conduct. It was, he mused in the back of his head, to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.  
  
"I know you're there, so get your lean ass out of bed before I have to send someone over to throw it out!" she all but bellowed in continuation, her voice still managing to be suitably threatening through the humming static of an outdated answering machine. "If you think you can ignore me and pretend you didn't manage to possibly traumatize the one witness we have, so help me God, I will do things to your internal organs Wufei never dreamed of. Get to work, do your job, and get the hell into my office before I'm forced to kill my secretary on basic principle." A cheerful beep sounded at the end, signifying she had cancelled the call, and he groaned loudly, pathetically, snarling his fingers in his hair and tugging agitatedly at it.  
  
"'Duo do this,'" he griped, flinging one long leg over the side of his mattress and digging around the floor for a smooth slipper with his foot, bumping the post of his bed in a casual reminder of his needing a longer bed-frame. He finally located the slipper, as well as its mate, and the other leg emerged from the engulfing swells of the covers, hooking his feet into the sheaths and pausing there, slouching forward with his back bent. "'Duo do that,'" he added in a newly adopted falsetto, straightening his back and glaring unhappily at the opposing wall. Drawing himself up to his impressive height, he planted his hands dangerously on his hips, finishing in grand finale, "'Duo, that is hardly the kind of mature attitude I expected from you!'" For a moment, he considered tossing his hair as a last insult, but fell short; it wouldn't help the murderous tangles at all.  
  
"The things I do for unique appearances," grumped Duo, maneuvering over a few piles of casually discarded romances and mechanic manuals. A finger touched the thicker bristles on his chin, an evolution from the down of yesterday, and he moved to the bathroom across from his bedroom, sparing a habitual glance at the flat end of the hallway, where something else might have once been. Pirate treasure, he thought with a smirk at his own fancy, elbowing the door open and snatching up a heavy brush like he would a weapon, wielding it with dangerous intent. "This," he muttered, stabbing the bristling teeth of his brush into the foremost knot hanging around shoulder level, "is not for the squeamish." A sharp tug elicited a muted, close-lipped growl at the stinging sensation in his scalp, and he proceeded with infinite care, pulling with short motions and finally a few sweeping ones once the knot had been vanquished, bringing the brush down the full length of his formidably long hair, stooping slightly to reach the ends brushing the inside of his knee. Lord, he was grateful for a learned resistance to ticklish feelings, though it still itched him terribly. "And now," he announced to the mirror image of himself, resisting the urge to make a juvenile face, "to the left!"  
  
It was nowhere near as difficult to straighten out the other side of his hair, most of the knots being smaller ones in comparison to the monster he had previously rid himself of, and he was pleased at the rarity of an easy morning ritual. He set the brush down, eyeing the copious amount of pulled hair forming a labyrinth of sorts between the bristles, and appraised himself in the mirror, frowning at the wave to his hair, one caused by near continuous braiding, and the stubble on his chin. When was the last time he'd simply worn his hair down? Other than the hideous task of having to brush it at least once every two hours just to avoid a tasking combing at night, he couldn't think of a truly decent reason. Social persecution might figure into it, too, and he set his jaw in a defiant manner, wishing to be ten again and able to wear long, unbraided hair without being conscious about it. Stupid, accursed society boundaries.   
  
Sighing, Duo tilted his head to his chest, causing his hair to tumble forward, brushing his flat stomach and wafting back and forth in reply to the movement. Nimble fingers braided swiftly, catching the hair in customary clumps and twisting them about one another in subconscious rhythm, and he sang softly under his breath to pass the longer time it took now to braid than the days of being a Gundam pilot. If Sally and Kino didn't bully him into getting a trim once every two months, he'd be tripping over his hair everywhere he went. "I wish I was a moose," he sang quietly, repeating the line in the same pitch and tune, before adding, "I wish I was because I was, I wish I was a moose."  
  
With an air of triumph, he snapped his head back up and avoided the temptation to stumble back at the switch in blood flow, instead proudly flipping his thick braid over his shoulder. One duty done, he grinned, reaching for his razor, with another to begin.  
  
Another five minutes found him stepping cheerily out of the bathroom, shaven and braided and the glorious image of a mischievous elf as he stripped his tank top off and tossing it carelessly to the floor of his bedroom, crossing the floor in a few wide strides to his closet. A scarlet turtleneck was yanked off its hanger, sending the triangular plastic swaying capriciously, and he struggled to fit it around his head, loudly swearing and condemning whoever had designed them straight to hell, while simultaneously trying to figure out how Trowa managed to wear them day in and day out without suffering from oxygen loss. He wasn't sure why he had chosen the turtleneck - it was a classy top that Relena had sent for his birthday, one that fit snugly to his leanly muscular torso and wrinkled where it bunched at his waist - and he shoved the curiosity away, avoiding the peculiar niggle of a thought hidden in the darkest catacombs of his mind. Black slacks and an ebon jacket were filched from the pile of 'clean enough to warrant another day of wear' clothes grouped at the foot of his closet, and he jerked the slacks on over his boxers, casting an anxious glance at the clock now reading '6:43.' "Figures," he sighed. "Even on a good day it takes forever to get ready." Shrugging the jacket on over his turtleneck, he kicked the slippers off, hunting with his foot yet again for something to wear over them. A pair of smudged black sneakers were revealed at the bottom of his semi-clean clothing pile and he smashed his sock-coated feet into them hurriedly, shaking his ankles until the sneakers finally settled into place.   
  
Reaching into the closet, he grabbed the strap of his duffel bag, reloaded last night with what ammunition he would need or might want, and, after a few seconds of wrestling mentally, he snatched a sinful piece of fiction from the teetering stacks pressed tightly together under the swaying clouds of fabric above. "Might as well read something interesting on the bus ride," he muttered, shoulder the duffel and shoving the slender romance novel into his deep pocket, pausing on the way out of his room to close the door.   
  
Looked like he'd have to get breakfast at the dubious hospital cafeteria. Again.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
She was a good girl in the earliest morning, still and quiet and obedient when the nurse came to check on her frequently, opening the door and asking questions in a falsely cheerful voice, one used to disguise a waver. Was the nurse sad for her, she wondered when she was left alone for the last time. Perhaps the woman wanted to avert her punishment. Don't do that, she whispered in her head to the thin nurse, it only makes them angrier.   
  
She didn't doubt the Man was going to punish her for recoiling from his touch, for fearing him for reasons that were obvious and ones she could not explain, could not label. His skin brushing hers hadn't bruised, hadn't tweaked her flesh into mottled colors, and it frightened her badly, almost as badly as his large hands clamping around her shoulders was oddly comfortable. Her acceptance of her fate was tinged with a thread of sadness, and she did her best to clamp down on the emotion threatening to crawl under her skin, sure that whatever bizarre form of fear he sparked in her was some new punishment.   
  
But no matter how it hurt, how it stung and bled and stained, she would not cry, would not give him the pleasure of her tears, her pain, her hopeless detachment. She would stay strong, think of the iridescent beauty of poems she had lifted from books at night, against his rules, breathlessly memorizing trails of tenderness and gentility she had known only through the softly whispering words. The Man could not hurt her the way she had been before; she would not let him touch her soul. Golden Mina had soothed her last night as they waited for the nurse, touching her shoulder gently and speaking to her the way she had always imagined she would speak to her lovely, lost son. Was that how a mother was? Golden and soft and protective.  
  
A knock sounded at the door, confident and polite, and she stared at it, confused, before sliding off the silver slick table and balancing her weight carefully on her swollen ankle, feeling a mild sense of pride in the specialized splint-shoe encircling it and the tender foot beneath it. She stood straight, a sense of courage welling up inside, new and weak, but strong, and she folded her hand behind her back, knitting her fingers together and rubbing one thumb along the cloth wrapped about her left palm. The Man would come in when he wanted, would he not?   
  
The door opened, hesitantly, and she caught a glimpse of the small man in dark green she had seen every day outside her door for the past week before the sleek, feline body of the Man appeared. "Y'know," he commented in a tone that was purposefully obnoxious, "it's rather rude to leave someone waiting after they've been considerate enough to knock before entering." He flashed her a brilliant smile, one that stunned her, from her newfound courage to her stroking thumb, and she felt confusion again. Why was he smiling as if she were a friend? He was supposed to hit her, beat her, tear into her and rip her in two. He laughed, a clear, husky sound, and he latched his fingers around something beyond her line of vision, outside the door, the barrier. The Man hauled a chair in, stiff and metal with stuffed brown leather on the seat and back in a paltry attempt to reproduce natural comfort, and he smiled again, his dark lips splitting easily and swallowing his face. "I'm not sure I'll fit," he admitted and she nearly shrank back, a wave of fear trickling up the back of her throat like a cancer, knowing he was going to do the thing he-her-husband had found the greatest pleasure in.   
  
"They never have chairs my size," the Man added, quietly closing the door and swinging the duffel off his shoulder, collapsing gustily onto the chair, long limbs folding at angles and long fingers playing with the end of his long, oak braid. She blinked, unsure of what to do or say, and she decided that, so long as he didn't throw her into deeper bewilderment, this was quite all right. Maybe she wasn't going to be punished after all.  
  
She was studying him as if he was a monkey, Duo reflected, twisting strands of hair around his finger. A big, insane, intriguing monkey, but a monkey nonetheless. What the hell; so long as she wasn't breaking the arms of dolls and screaming at him. He quelled the lecherous joke waiting to happen and leaned forward in the chair, propping his angular elbows on his knees and grumpily wishing he'd given in to the childish impulse to steal one of the wide wheelchairs kept safely behind the front desk, but, alas, Russell, He Who Was Late, had been shifted to the day shift, with his delicious Mina given graveyard duty. Wheelchair theft had been blocked from him for the duration of his work here, unless some other gorgeous girl got a job as desk-jockey. Who designed this anyway, he scowled mentally, taking care to keep the downward expression from his face. "So," he began, injecting every bit of the legendary Maxwell charisma he had become famous - and, amongst some of his psychology peers, infamous - for into his words, stopping just short of flirting, "how've you been doing?"  
  
Her eyebrow, slim and dark blue, arched very slowly, tilting up to rest, perched closer to her shaggy bangs than the other, and her arms moved from her back to her front. One hand came to rest on the opposite hip, her other hand curling around the first hand's elbow, fingers tightening about.  
  
"No need to be so defensive," he played, grinning at her exasperated, wary, cornered expression. The urge to fidget tickled his limbs and he shifted his weight, trying to be as non-threatening as possible around her, but she stepped back anyway, her eyes flickering with streaks of animalistic fear. Duo grimaced, forcefully stilling his muscles from quivering into further motion. "Sorry," he said before he could think, a wry smile twisting his long mouth into the sardonic curves women loved, a sort of defense mechanism to try and set her at ease, "I'm not used to working with women who've been…" Well, shit, how was he supposed to use tact with this? "Y'know," he finished lamely, the corner of his mouth quirking up a bit further.   
  
It was an inexplicable wound to his pride when her eyes widened fearfully, darkening moodily, and she wound behind the table, as if to place more distance and an obstacle between them. And all he'd done was smile at her.  
  
"I'm not going to bite you," he hurried, and then mentally beat himself at his mindless choice of words. "Aw, crap," he muttered, sweeping his hand over his unruly bangs, drawing them up unevenly and letting them fall as he tried to think of a way to calm her. Finally, he sighed for the countless time in the past three hours and unfolded his body, standing up and slouching a little so she wouldn't feel so small in front of him. "I really am sorry," he commented ruefully. "I just have a tendency to stick my foot in my mouth before I stop to think about what I'm saying. I'm not trying to scare you or hurt your feelings, I'm just a moron."  
  
And then, as he watched, her other eyebrow raised up to meet its twin and she tilted her head to the side, rocking forward on her heels. It was the oddest sense of accomplishment he had ever gained, a far cry from the sadistic glee of his first successful Gundam fight, different from the first time he and Hilde had spent the night together, and a degree shy of the knowledge of being a psychologist. It wasn't unpleasant, though. Grinning at himself, at her, he sketched a bow to her, inclining his head and making it appear with the twirling motions of his hand he had dipped into a formal courtesy.   
  
"Allow me to introduce myself," he announced grandly, slipping his jacket off and dropping it lazily on the hated chair. "I'm Duo Maxwell, the God of Death." He stuck his hands in his pockets, leaning at an angle and spreading a dashing smile across his face.  
  
Her expression was striking, eerily delicate in its utter surprise, and her eyebrows furrowed together, her mouth closing and pursing in bewildered thought. He could find no trace of fear in her face or those oceanic eyes that spoke what her tongue did not, and he smiled even wider. Remarkable progress for a young woman who was scared to death of men.  
  
The Man was breaking every rule in the Book of Truths, she thought with no slight amazement, trying to understand how one could do that. She had disobeyed him, pulled from his touch without his permission, and she had known she was to be reprimanded harshly for her disobedience. And unless he was trying to confuse her into a weakness she did not know about, he had done nothing he was supposed to. He was a man and he controlled everything; if he desired her, she was to let him do what he wished, but he did not desire her. Why was that, when every man she had been brought to by the husband had lusted? How very, very…odd. Happy. Confusing.  
  
The Man was Maxwell-god-of-death. He had a name, even if it was a rather strange thing to be called. She wondered, briefly, if he knew her name, if she had a name. But she could not speak to him in his language; it was forbidden, outlawed, wholly despicable. Silence claimed her tongue, swirled in her throat in thick, unwanted waves, and she was still, unmoving by the silver slick table.  
  
"I have a question," started Maxwell-god-of-death, and she wanted to smile, wanted to clap her hands together at the sheer joy of knowing another name, another ethereal secret, "but you don't really need to answer. Yesterday, you spelled a word out on the table." He paused and she stared, a knot of tension wrapping into a ball that settled in her gut, heavy and dreadful, and she felt the joy slipping away at the clawed feet of betrayal; she had written in desperation, written in recent memory of blood and pain and loss - where was her son?  
  
"What," he said softly, leaning towards her, his panther body coiling, gravitating in her direction, violet eyes swallowing her whole, like an orange with yellow veins, "does 'miedo' mean?"   
  
And it came from her throat before she meant to, tainting the air with the core of the Book of Truths, the greatest of the lying truths, and her only solace was that it was not in the rapid language of Maxwell-god-of-death but the One language. She whispered, shouted, murmured - which was it?   
  
"Yo soy despreciable," she said quietly, in a voice that was soft and subdued, and she saw him wrinkle his nose, his face an echoing mask of the surprise she had felt so frequently as of late. He didn't understand the One language; heathen, whispered the voice of the man she waited in fear for, uncultured swine meant for fool's games.   
  
"Yo soy despreciable?" Maxwell-god-of-death parroted slowly, his wide, curved lips mouthing the words clumsily, trying to identify the sounds with something he knew. He reminded her of a cat she had seen once, caged in the basement for the games the dark ones would play at night; everything long and predatory, but not in a way that was naturally frightening, rather a sort of horrendous beauty, sleek cords of muscle that were not thick but were trim and fitted to the limbs meant for stalking.   
  
He wore red, she realized, red and thin, like layers of fuzzy paint, and it horrified her, frightened her, sent her stumbling backwards into the corner as she felt the vile thing called trust burn its way into her fear, not pushing the fear away, but mingling with it, joining, merging, so that she wasn't completely frightened by him. That was evil, wrong, disgusting!  
  
Nice going, Duo, he thought sarcastically and he frowned, sucking a corner of his lower lip into his mouth as he turned away, crouching beside the duffel. Unzipping it, he shifted uncomfortably, the corners of the book stuffed into his pocket catching his hip painfully, and he cautiously slipped, from under the weight of a basketball, a binder, and various other items, the slim weight of a stack of paper, wrapped in glistening plastic. When in doubt, he thought, write it out.   
  
She had spoken, he processed as he tore off the plastic wrap, balling it up in his hand and dropping it back into the darkness of the duffel. A pen was unclipped from the binder and clutched in the same hand as the paper, firmly kept locked under his thumb. He wasn't quite as dense as Wufei and Heero were apt to tell him, usually through gunshots aimed at his limbs, and he could sense, perhaps not as well as Quatre might have, the kinetic wrongness in the air, stiffening the clear hairs on his neck. Aimee was frightened, he guessed. Probably remnants of the abuse, filtered the textbooks laid to memory, a fear of retribution for deeds she had been punished for in the past. It made sense, in a creepy way, explaining vaguely why her behavior was oddly complicated, instead of the pure fright most victims expressed. Her personality, from what he could cipher from her movements, was quiet and generally submissive, though she had something of a stubborn streak. He supposed.  
  
Akin to a shot in the dark, he grimaced.  
  
"Aimee," Duo said gently, catching a short snicker in his throat; ten years ago, he would have laughed his rear off if someone had told him what he'd be doing. "I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable. You don't need to talk if you don't want to," 'yo soy despreciable,' she echoed in his head, "but I do need to communicate with you somehow." She was avoiding his eyes, keeping her chin tucked into her neck, thick, dark hair obscuring her features from view. "Aimee," he repeated, forcing himself to remember the psychological rules of etiquette, quiet tones and polite words. God, he hated faking sugary sincerity when he wanted more than anything to relax, but he'd seen how uneasy she had just become. "You can write things down, if you want."  
  
Her face lifted, warily, and he grinned almost against his will at her expression, still frightened, still quelled, but with that eyebrow tweak telling him just how silly he sounded at times. He was willing to bet she wasn't even truly aware of that spirited twitch, a subtle difference from her scrawny body's careful acquiescence. Of course, he amended in his head, she can't write if she doesn't have anything to write with.   
  
"Before you cut me down for my obvious stupidity," he said, unable to fully stop his grin, "here's some paper to use, 'kay?" The sheets of paper came to rest on the shining metal of the table and she, standing in a shrunken stance at the wall a foot or so behind it, switched her unreadable eyes to it, her hands clenching and unclenching the cloth of her hospital gown, then hesitantly reaching for the tempting gift.   
  
Her fingertips, creamy and white, brushed the thin roughness of the lined paper, finding no rule, no bar singing coldly she would hurt and ache afterwards, and this meant it was no crime to write. As she smoothed her palm over it, the soft skin of her unwounded hand settling upon it, another hand closed over her wrist, engulfing her snow skin in a firm grip of lightest brown, the golden hue of activity and sunlight. Storming eyes met violet and she fought the scream in her chest, kept her lungs from expanding, from hurling the indecipherable noise at him. What was due to her, coming, coming, and she pulled back once, futilely, before sagging fractionally and freezing her eyes to his.  
  
And then he smiled that Cheshire smile, lips curling at the corners in dry, morbid humor at some unknown joke burnt into his soul. "You're supposed to say thank-you," he reprimanded lightly, the faux soothing tearing away from his voice. His hand squeezed her wrist once before releasing, and she gripped the wad, her eyes trailing down to her wrist. She could see no dark reds swelling up to greet her, no mottled fingerprints, merely a few traces of skin made paler for a moment from his grip. Looking up, she cocked her head to one side, blue hair whispering and falling in tune with her. "You're welcome," he hinted, holding the pen out and she took it, ignoring his words and taking care to avoid contact. When she showed no signs of sharing words of thanks, he sighed and crossed his arms, shifting uncomfortably at the restraining turtleneck and the mild itching it was causing. He was making progress, though, and relatively quickly, so it was easier to pass over the irritation.  
  
She uncapped the pen, fitting the cap on the butt of the pen and placing, very delicately, the felt tip on the paper, fluidly scripting what she was thinking, her face thin and attentive. He tried to give her space, moving his weight to his heels and facing one of the other walls, pursing his lips as if to whistle, his braid thumping against his thigh, and he sneaked a look from the corner of his eye. Bent over the paper, she was writing slower than he would have thought, taking careful time to arrange how she wanted to write it. 'Yo soy despreciable,' whispered the quiet voice and he summoned aged lessons on languages, archaic and modern. Spanish, he yelped silently, why the hell didn't I figure that out before? She was writing in Anglo-Japanese, from what he could tell from his mirrored point of view, and if the language she was taught to write in first was Spanish - she had no accent, from what very little he had heard - it would be no wonder she had difficulty writing in the English-Japanese hybrid used as the common language.   
  
If he twisted his neck a certain way, pretended to be stretching his arms out as well as his neck and finding a truthful relief in the relaxing motion, he could almost make out what she was writing…  
  
"Ah, Dr. Maxwell?" came a timid voice from the door and he nearly growled, letting his arms fall to his sides, thumbs sliding into the pockets of his slacks and a stern frown flourishing his mouth down. The nurse, one by the name of Elizabeth, was leaning in the door, which he must not have closed properly, and her hands tightened convulsively along the edges of a rounded plastic tray, an amalgam of simple foods arranged on it: applesauce, slices of bread, cheese, and whatnot. "I need to feed Aimee, sir." She swallowed and he realized he was still frowning, glaring, at her. Sheepishly smiling in apology, he turned to look at Aimee, one of his hands lifting in a placating gesture.  
  
"Gotta go, dollface," he said cheerfully, and she gave no heed of having heard his words. Exhaling in a loud gust, he moved his focus to Elizabeth and grinned, scooping his jacket off the chair and hanging it steadily over his arm, grasping his duffel. He swung it over his shoulder and told her in parting, "Might as well use the chair, ma'am."  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Dennis more or less danced into the exercise room in the lower half of the hospital, one specially reserved for the patients being treated or the more foolhardy of visitors. Thin and tall, with black hair that had once been thick, he was the poster child for stress-related eating disorders.   
  
"Hey, Dennis," Duo called in a friendly manner, snapping his elbows in an arcing motion and gaining a satisfied appearance when his basketball neatly fell through the wafting white net. "And two more for Maxwell as he swerves to meet rival Buckman!" He faked cheering crowd noises as he snatched at the ball, drumming it to the moderately kept floorboards and doing remarkably well at jogging in sneakers across the floor. His slacks and dressy shirt clashed with the image, producing an interesting contrast.  
  
"Can I skip lunch today?" Dennis Buckman, made ill by his abusive father and one too many encounters with alcohol, asked hopefully in his rasping voice, green eyes almost deceptively bright. "Please? Eating makes me sick."  
  
"No," countered Duo, dribbling the ball and tossing it to his second appointment of the day, "you make yourself sick. And while your liver and vocal cords are beyond much help, outside of depressingly expensive surgery, I'd like to keep your stomach from rotting. Pass."  
  
Dennis flung the ball back, a scowl on his narrow face. "Damn it," he sighed. "Maury and I wanted to fast today, to, y'know, purify the toxins from our body."  
  
"Maury," the braided man repeated, tapping the basketball in the ritualistic motion in an absent manner, casting his eyes up to the fluorescent lit ceiling. "Is this the one in your head or the giant lobotomized monkey?"  
  
"Head," Dennis said indifferently, glancing disparagingly about the scantly accessorized room, at the mats and weights in one corner and the physical therapy equipment in another, "and you aren't one to talk. You being the God of Death and all." At Duo's questioning glare, he smirked rudely and jabbed a bony finger at the heavy metal tubing that was the ventilation system, a tell-all quirk to his face. "Be careful what you say," he warned. "Pass."  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
He breathed in short, shallow gasps, sweat beading at his temples and sliding down his cheeks to mix with the tears already wet along the contours. Slender arms touched his shoulders, kneaded them gently, and then slid around him, holding his head to her neck as he cried, and she stroked his blonde hair tenderly. "It's okay to weep," she murmured, pressing her lips hard against his jaw, working out the anger she felt at whatever had hurt him so and the selfish anger directed plainly at him. "You don't have to be strong," she mouthed and he shuddered, tightening his artist's fingers in her raven hair and molding his lips to the crook of her collar.   
  
"I don't mean to hurt you," he tried to explain, feeling her body shift next to his, her arms hugging him with a rare affection and her lips touching his jaw a second time. "In any way," he started, his voice trailing off as he shivered in the wake of a spark of self-loathing, from the darkness seething under the walls and cloth he had hidden it with.   
  
"You have never hurt me in any way," Rachelle lied, smiling in a semisweet manner, acknowledging that it was not entirely truthful; he had never struck her or harmed her, not when she snarled at him and not once when they had joined, but why bother with emotions? They mattered little in any case, and she let her lie slip past her lips to protect him.  
  
"Liar," he said, almost teasingly, and she stiffened, a bit surprised by this shift from his normally extraordinarily polite persona. "Ah, I apologize," Quatre added quickly and she laughed, a sound made lower out of the nighttime instinct. He smiled shyly and she moved one arm from his back, passing her hand over his cheeks and resting her palm over his lips, trying to stop the contented warmth spreading through her body as he kissed the barrier meekly.   
  
"Don't do that," she whispered sharply, flinching at his hurt expression, the flash of pain that colored his lovely eyes a shade darker. His fingertips pressed almost painfully along her back, arching in a reflexive gesture, and she swallowed a gasp, leaning to touch her nose to his, shrouding them both with the mist of her endless violet-tinged hair mingling with his infinitely lighter strands. "I didn't not enjoy it," she explained in a gentler voice, "but it…feels different." Slowly removing her hand from his mouth, she traced his ear with her fingers and touched his lips with hers briefly.  
  
"Different?" he whispered back, his own hand unweaving from her entangled hair to tickle the dip of her neck. "How so?" His fingers swept across her shoulder, barely brushing the skin.  
  
"I can't define it," she breathed, catching his hand and bringing it between them, knitting fingers with fingers. His pale next to her tanned cream, breathing evening and falling into a mirroring rhythm, chests rising and falling in time with the other. Rachelle could feel it lulling her into slumber, the sleek relaxation of muscles and she tightened her grip around him, burrowing her face, in turn, into his neck. It was invading her entire body, this irreversible, indescribable feeling of pleasure and contentment and joy and sorrow and longing, thousands of emotions chorded into one, and she feared it. Am I now turning to him for protection, she thought. As if he could shield me from something he is causing.  
  
He stiffened, returning the embrace with hesitant warmth, as if afraid she would reject him. And then he caught her up in a hug, sweet and unexpected, and he expelled from his throat, voice kept respectful, "I'm going to take the offer the Preventers gave me. I…can't not. Something doesn't feel right about staying out of this one, and I promise I'll talk to you every day, I love you so much." They tumbled from his mouth rapidly, asking for forgiveness he did not expect to receive, and she was confused by the swell of something not unpleasant at his last words.  
  
"What makes you think you'll be going alone?" she said lightly, something in her stomach roiling as the premonition grew stronger, just a fraction larger, and she kissed his face until neither remembered worrying at all.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Author's Notes: At the risk of not being believed by anyone at all...I've had this chapter and 'Hymn' (the next one) done since the weekend of Feb. 9, but, after Kaiya-chan sent me her feedback (Yay! Positive feedback! *happy hippo dance*), I wasn't able to post for a variety of reasons: bronchitis (which meant I couldn't go to school, which is where I have to upload my stories due to AOL deciding that, even though I have 'Mature Teen' as my rating, I can't use Document Manager), the school's Internet being down (the DAY I GOT BACK?!), and then FF.net being shut down. So, my apologies for the lateness, and we can all blame Fate, who hates me like most Americans do mosquitoes. However, I am now fully addicted to the Drake and Zeke radio show on Rock 103...immature monkeys that they are. 0o; And, further more, I have two more chapters done and edited now, but I'm going to wait until next week to load them. I'll be in Egypt from mid-May through Mid-July, and unless I get to use a different Internet service there, I'm going to have to simply load several chapters before I leave (because this story is pouring out of me like sugar through a seive) and several when I get back. ;]  
  
In other news, yet again, the elusive Ms. Kino is mentioned…and heard! But will she ever be seen? Yup. As for the Spanish in this chappie, I apologize if it's faulty: I haven't taken Spanish since the eighth grade, and that was two years ago.  
  
What else can I say, but:  
  
Standard disclaimer is stuck to this like I am to Nuriko-x-Miaka fanfics: undeniably and wholly. If you visit www.FanFiction.net or 'Danzibo's Loop-o-Stuff' on Saturn's ninth ring (the galaxy's favorite tourist location!), you're lucky enough to catch this new installment. Subscribe now to Pluto's premier holo-zine, 'Charon X-Treme!'  
  
Feedback is welcome through reviews on-site or e-mails to alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. So are toy Duo chibis to keep my poor, lonely Sailor Mercury chibi company. Quatre and Rei chibi dolls are more than welcome; they can snuggle on my bookshelf. Isn't it cute?  
  
Oh, and but of course, thank-yous to my reviewers (including three missed the first time around):  
  
little ace (I'd like to work on 'Moon Ring,' but I seriously have felt no inspiration for it in several months and I doubt I'll work on it again; would it be best if I removed it from ff.net overall? I hope you enjoyed 'Requiem,' though!), Ice (who was such a sweetheart for reviewing two times; Duo being a psychologist is...odd, but I can't explain it at the moment - I've just been coming up with ideas left and right for this thing, and I can honestly say I have never written this much this fast on a fanfic in my life...*sweatdrops*), azn_otaku (I completely agree - I'm sick of the Senshi/Mamoru-hate-Usagi fics, they're not even /logical/; thanksies for the compliments! *blushes happily* And 'Overture' is...9 pages? I have up to the seventh chapter done, and chappie 7 is 10 pages...that's long for me, really!), The Silent Wanderer (yaaaaaaaay!!! Compliments! And, well, I sorta have Heero in a kinda relationship with a BSSM character...read the next chapter to find out who! ;] *giggles*), Tira Wolf (I think a lot of people might've skipped over this story 'cause of the subject matter...but I'm glad you took the chance and found you liked it; here are two more chapters!), Kaiya-chan (*glomps Kaiya happily* Thanksiesthanksies! You're such a cool person...and I think all hamsters are evil; my brother's thinks I'm a giant Snickers or something), UNgoddess (the romance subscription is something I thought would actually fit Duo - kind of like the idea of Sally being a hard rock fan; and, eventually, Ami will get through the badness...though with the pace this fic is taking, that might be a while...urk...), and Girl-chama (happy endings will abound - I hope - and here I have to put the standard: I'm not alone! Thank God someone else can see Rei/Quatre working! :|) Yay! I'm very fond of people complimenting my writing style...my English teacher tells me I'm too descriptive...but don't worry; you're one of the best writers on-line, Girl-chama!).   
  
0o; Long author's notes...on to the next chapter? 


	6. Requiem: Hymn

His typing was quick, hurried and methodical as the keys were pressed sharply down into their positions on the glossy white keyboard. Dark blue eyes, reflecting the soft glow of the screen, scanned pages of information in language after language, leaping from Chinese to Russian to the Anglo-Japanese dialect popular on the older colonies, and he took the information in, printing it onto his brain for future reference. A frown thinned his lips, his face flickering with an anger that was kept carefully held beneath his features, prevented from lashing out. He toyed momentarily with the idea of calling Maxwell and getting the former spy's help, but he knew with little doubt the man would rub it in. Clipping the power button on the terminal, he leaned back in the swiveling chair, shifting uncomfortably at the feel of the ribbed plastic spine rubbing his back and the abrasive touch of the cushion at his neck. A stiff plastic chair would be far more welcome, but he technically was forbidden from this sector of the Earth-based Preventers headquarters in any case. Undue attention could prove especially unhelpful.  
  
According to the databases he had been able to hack into - without Maxwell's help, he added mentally - and review, Philip Cortez was barely more than a ghost. The information he had read was more or less the same as that shown in a newspaper, scant facts that hardly formed a skeleton, and it was somewhat impressive that the newspapers had been able to dress it up enough to form the standard five-day, breaking news series. Latino blood, unknown parents, unknown birthplace, age placed at forty-nine, leader of a particularly dangerous drug cartel with mob ties - hell, he thought with a grunt, it was the mob. And, of course, perhaps the most widely known tidbit of knowledge, of gossip, of pity, was his common law wife, an abused girl of eighteen years, and, apparently, a girl he had kept from the age of nine.   
  
At an earlier time, having seen personally that the Dorlian family and their entourage had left safely, he had copied results from blood tests, tissue exams, and such forth from Cortez's wife. Running a comparison through the extensive, multiple databases holding the identities and biological information on individual after individual had proved one niggling suspicion he had:  
  
For all intents and purposes, Aimee Cortez simply did not exist.  
  
--  
Requiem: Hymn  
--  
  
Nancy Trishmore stared blearily at the green wood of her front door as she shuffled down the carpeted stairs, tying with practiced ease the fuzzy red sash of her white robe. Whispering a peach hand through her orange-tinted red hair, the thick strands naturally crimped and cut at her ears, she idly considered putting an early morning visitor in as the dashing hero of her next romance; with as good as 'The Duchess of Fire' was selling, she might as well take a break from historical fiction and script modern settings. She twisted the lock in the doorknob open and slid aside the chain lock, letting the metal eye strike the doorframe heavily, and she pulled the door open.  
  
"It's two in the morning!" she cried in exasperation, her antique Brooklyn accent straining her words comically, when she saw who it was, her hand settling firmly on her hip as she leaned to the side in a slightly infuriated manner. The snow swirling thickly outside had tainted his untidy black suit with spots of darker wetness, leaving his white button-up clean and his loose tie crumpled from running. He raised a wide, dark chocolate eyebrow and she sighed, thumbing at her grey-blue eyes and opening the door wider, gesturing vaguely for him to come in. "Right, right, it's seven o'clock Heero Yuy time. Musta slipped my mind." She closed the door behind him, placing the chain lock back in place and slipping the doorknob's built-in lock in its nightly position.   
  
"You need a deadbolt," he reminded her in his near monotone, voice surprisingly deep for a man only three inches taller than her petite Irish self. "I could have kicked your door in without much effort."  
  
"And I would've asked if ya wanted to watch classics with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan," she replied in tired banter, leading him into the small, quaintly decorated living room to the left. A long couch with a large armchair at either end faced an average-sized television, an aged vid-phone to its right. Paintings of the covers of her multiple romances decorated the walls, intermingled with photos of friends, pets, and her soon-to-be ex-husband, Umino. Nancy flopped into one of the armchairs, brushing loose strands of hair from her face and watching him as he carefully, smoothly, sat on the end of the couch closest to her, shedding his inky jacket and rolling his white sleeves up to his elbows. "Ya look like my cousin Jim when you're all professional like that," she said matter-of-factly, grinning at his slightly confused expression, his countenance looking more like a teddy bear than usual.   
  
"Of course," he stated slowly, lowering his eyebrow into the usual strict look he had. Heero tapped his honey brown fingertips together as she reached over to the lamp beside him, tugging promptly at the dangling cord peeking from the ridged shade encircling the bulb. While she blinked and paused for a few seconds to let her vision adjust, he remained as blindly alert as always, unmoving, unaffected, unnoticing.   
  
Bastard, she thought affectionately.   
  
"I have a riddle," began Heero, his eyes narrowing as he gauged her reaction to his statement; she adopted as casual an interest as she could. "How do you prove someone exists when evidence says they do not?"  
  
"Find the person," she answered immediately, feeling it might be the only shot she had at playing his convoluting games. The slight quirk at the corners of his mouth showed her she was accurate, by at least some percentage, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "My turn," she chirped, feeling the last bit of sleepiness leave her mind, her face losing its hold on her mask and slipping into the childish eagerness she felt. He inclined his head acceptingly, settling his elbows on his knees and leaning forward in shrouded anticipation. She smiled and finished, "Who are you looking for, 'Ro?"  
  
His eyes flattened, darkening intimidatingly, and he moved his body so he was closer to her, studying her face with a curiously frightening, listless persona on his Japanese features. "Her name is not her own," he breathed enigmatically. "Her story is incomplete and little is known."  
  
Quelling the excited fear in her belly, she moved to meet him, grinning foolishly, her eyes closing and thin red eyelashes brushing her arched cheeks. "You watched 'Dial "M" for Murder,' didn't you? Lovely film, I liked the writer best, o' course, but I'm subjective," she hummed, self-consciously clutching at the front of her robe to keep the swell of her chest hidden. "You'll have to wait until I've made some tea, 'kay?" Pulling back, she stood and brushed at the ankle-long folds of the terrycloth robe, slipping across her carpet to the kitchen. Heero frowned thoughtfully, fingers plucking at the knot in his tie and finally sliding the length of cloth from around his neck, and he drew himself to his feet, smoothing over the front of his shirt and opting to leave his snow-streaked dress shoes on.  
  
The fluorescent overhead light flicked on, she had busied herself in the suitably small kitchen of her compact house, every surface a worn, homey wood. A cabinet was patiently holding itself open as she rummaged through its contents, her heels arching off the cotton backing of her red slippers, and she asked, voice muffled by the cabinet door, "Ya want some? I'm loaded up with orange-flavored and, um…orange-flavored." She laughed briefly, shaking her Christmas tin at him mockingly, her button nose wrinkling up slightly. Stepping back, almost stumbling, she tapped the cabinet shut and clutched the bent tin in her lightly freckled hands, grinning in self-directed amusement.   
  
"Mandarin is fine," he nodded and he tugged two chipped mugs from the drying rack erected lopsidedly beside her cluttered sink. Gingerly moving aside the stacks threatening to topple, he lifted the silver bar of the faucet and tilted it to the left, waiting patiently for the thirty seconds it took for hot water to begin coursing out and listening as Nancy wrestled with the tin, popping the lid off and lifting out two tea bags. Three minutes found them seated at her small double-seated table, a slender rectangle reminiscent of those in the food courts of most malls, dipping mismatched spoons into the slowly coloring liquid. Billowing clouds of amber traced through the water, like veins gradually clustering together to form a darkly clear whole.   
  
She sipped at her tea and grimaced, motioning for him to avoid doing the same. "It isn't ready, yet," she explained with a smile, dinging her spoon against the side of her mug and licking a droplet off her lip. Heero was quiet, though that wasn't quite an odd experience, but he was expressing contemplation more than brooding, and she cocked her head to one side, curious. "'s up?"  
  
He parroted her spoon, clinking his own against his mug and mulling over what to say before choosing the direct approach. "Why are you and Umino divorcing?" he questioned with something bordering on a lack of tact, glancing about the kitchen he had grown fond of over the years and thanking Umino for wanting a classy apartment more than the friendly home. She blinked and laughed, scooping at her tea, nervously looking everywhere but at him.  
  
"How long have we known each other?" she countered rhetorically, her voice soft. "Three years, right, after that computer convention Umino dragged me to? We kept in touch 'cause ya thought I was good at figuring out crap, and I'd just moved, so I didn't have many friends anywho." She sipped at her tea and smiled, taking a larger sip, and he sipped at his, reminded briefly of how weak he thought tea tasted. "But, y'know, my first friend would hafta be a night owl who liked to drop by at times most people consider meant for a li'l something we like to call 'sleep.'" Sarcasm touched her words and she winked playfully at him. "So, long 'n' short…" Nancy took a disinterested sip and said in a forcibly careless tone, "he thought we were having an affair."  
  
Heero's tea took a two-way trip down his throat, nearly slipping into his lungs before he choked it back up, hiding the startled reflex with his mug and spitting the tea quietly back into the rest of the drink. Her cheeks were bright red and he, while learning how to breathe again, inhaled silently in a calming gesture, setting his mug onto the dark oak surface of the table. She was taking great lengths at avoiding his gaze, choosing, as all people inevitably choose, the most unlikely object to fixate on, her cloudy blue eyes sternly focused on a dimple in the wall highlighted by the dim light.  
  
To be perfectly honest, it wasn't an idea he had ignored; on several occasions, he had shown up at her doorstop in the early morning wanting something other than her surprisingly agile mind, but his sense of morals, such as it was, kept him from wrinkling her cozy life. He had felt a deep passion for Relena Dorlian, one formed by mutual fascination and physical attraction, but Nancy had been a far different case, a loose friendship growing warmer and strangely fulfilling until it became contenting, comfortable, and pleasingly needful to be near. Damn, he swore, unaware that his eyes had turned dark again, though they did not flatten, and he missed her dredge up resolve.  
  
"Now, what was it ya needed help on?" she asked brightly, the pearly, flaming image of friendship.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"Nice braid," Makoto Kino, COIC of the M-13 Preventers branch office, commented congenially as she thumbed meaninglessly through a thick wad of legal papers, ripping one out of every so often and running it through the hibernating shredder waiting on the corner of her desk, spitting out thin strips into the halfway filled trash can placed alongside the large metal slab. Her own auburn hair, a mix of whipped chocolate nougat and crimson roses, was pulled effortlessly back in an arched ponytail, curling in waves down the back of her tailored blue women's suit.   
  
"Nice ass," Duo replied cheerily, crossing the green carpet patterned into swirling whorls and curlicues. He eased into one of the two stiff fabric chairs facing her desk and fixed a charmingly bright smile at her, a gleaming sliver of white on his tanned face. The knotted tail of his braid struck his thigh as he sat, and he shifted temporarily, working it behind his back before he could adopt a falsely relaxed air, his muscles tensed as he waited for the legendary Kino temper to explode. She was a wonderful woman most of the time, with a mothering personality and friendly nature, but he had also seen her angry, though he had thankfully managed to never be at the receiving end before.  
  
"Not offering," she, in turn, replied dryly, judging the papers left in her hand and, with a shrug, separated them into four smaller piles to be run through the shredder. It was after the first was fed to the hungry machine when she turned to face him, her olive eyes leveling with his and sparkling with crackling anger, a sort of lightning that had him shrinking, hunching over in his seat. Friggin' hell, he thought with amazement, and here I thought only Sally could give that look!  
  
"I was going to break somewhere around ten regulations and simply kick your ass," she informed him sweetly, and he refrained from telling her the odds of her being able to do that were slim, mostly because it had been over ten years since he'd had to keep someone from brutally murdering him and she, thankfully, was uninformed of his past as a pilot. "However," she glared at him, conveying the feeling she still wanted to harm him, "Dr. Chang convinced me it wouldn't solve matters, as it was Lady Une who chose you for this assignment and beaten, bruised, or bloody, you'd have to go back anyway."   
  
"I'm going to assume it wasn't Wufei who vouched for me," he noted out loud and he felt a small burst of relief when she smiled humorously.  
  
"He offered usage of his katanas and an arsenal of explosives I'm not sure he's legally allowed to have on a colony," she admitted, eyes softening a bit from the frightening heat of earlier. "Look, Maxwell, it wouldn't be such a big deal if the patient herself wasn't a big deal. Une and Robertson have both given me explicit orders to not tell you any more, so I can't explain why you have to tread carefully around her." She sighed and massaged her temples, muscles in her jaw jumping in tension as she breathed.   
  
Looking up, she thinned her eyes at him, her simmering anger giving way to concern. "Something big is happening and we need her in the best psychological shape possible, and like it or not, your screwball methods might be one of the few ways to get her that way."  
  
"Gee," he grinned, uncomfortable with the level of seriousness, and he squirmed in his chair, braid bunched painfully at the small of his back, "I'm flattered."  
  
"Don't be," Makoto said bluntly, lowering her hands and lifting a second quarter of the paper, absently tipping it through the whirring blades of the shredder. "General consensus is that Lady Une figured sending an insane psychologist to help Cortez's widow would show her how good it was to be sane."  
  
Duo did a passable impression of Heero's infamous death glare and she grinned cheekily back at him, radiating impish delight and a familial fondness. "Oh, golly, thanks for that boost to my ego," he grumped, pouting purposefully, and she chuckled, finishing off the third quarter with something resembling devilish glee. "Havin' fun offing the paper?" he requested mildly, listening with interest to the delightfully destructive sound of the ripping fibers. Lord, he needed a punching bag or something, because he was sick of not having something to hit.   
  
"Jeff thinks I'm being too friendly with staff," she told him in a voice that was far from the blindly enraged one of the morning, "but I think you guys are too thin anyway. Besides, I like baking things to bring in." A flash of pain struck her face, exiting quickly, the memory of something loved and lost, and he fidgeted with his braid, glancing at the floor, the desk, the shredder, to avoid that emotion he had seen everywhere since his childhood - Aimee exploded into his mind, pain and sorrow and angst and everything bad he had lived through or escaped experiencing, and he felt his lungs freeze, his breath hitching in his throat.   
  
"I think," he started slowly, distantly, hearing his voice but not recognizing the texture of it as his, and he knew it was out of place, changing the subject so drastically, logically, neither, "I'm selfish." Makoto gave him a slightly bewildered look, her pink rose earrings dancing with the glimmering overhead lights, her curved body lit from behind by the simulation of a setting sun, thousands of millions of bulbs dimming automatically. "When I read the case files on Aimee, I guess I took the case," he pulled his face into a sour expression, "whatever, was given the case, I went with it 'cause it was a form of therapy for me." His eyes searched her face, expecting further confusion or frustration, something other than the dawning understanding in her youthful, maternal features. "I'm sick of pain."  
  
The final quarter slipped through the shredder, filling the silent office with the sound of tearing, ripping, peaceful, accepted death, and he shuddered, starting to realize why he had so quickly elected to take the task that week and odd days ago, feeling guilt and self-loathing as well as relief and a sense of freedom. How could he help Aimee when he wanted to help himself? Tears stung the back of his eyes and he stabbed his fingers into them, shoving back the memories of a stolen apple and fingers touching his hair, pulling out tangles that had grown for years; it was a war they all fought in their souls, each of the pilots, tapping down demons melted into their cores, and he had nearly forgotten the sensation of losing control. "Dammit," he bit out in a quiet voice.  
  
"Look at that," Makoto said gently, sounding more like a mother than he would ever tell her, "it's not even seven and you've had an epiphany. Chocolate chips be okay for tomorrow?"  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
He leaned his head against the wall, sucking air into his lungs deeply as he imprisoned the need to weep, to curl as a child might and let tears coat his face, and he pulled his jacket off in quick, jerking motions, letting the black cloth crumple into a formless swath on the tiled floor of the hallway. Muscles under the red turtleneck shivered, pulsing as they alternated tensing and contracting, and he was relieved to feel the vibration of his cell-phone in the deep pocket of his slacks. Hurriedly digging it out, he flipped it open and, inhaling thickly once more, the carefully air conditioned atmosphere of the basement level stretching his lungs, thumbed it on, bringing the slender plastic to his ear.  
  
"Maxwell," came a serious, dead voice, curt and almost weary sounding, as if the speaker had been forced to do something he desperately did not. A smile burst across Duo's face, an innocently delighted one reminiscent of a boy being contacted by a distanced brother.  
  
"Heero, what's up?" he cheered, turning his back to the wall and leaning back, curving his shoulders and head forward, legs splayed out in front with one ankle crossing over the other. Studying a prominent scar on his sneaker, he felt his demon subside grumpily, falling sway to bonds of friendship, no matter how one-sided they might be at times.  
  
He thought he might have heard Heero mutter, "Bite me," but it was both nonsensical and uncharacteristic, so he merely raised his eyebrows thoughtfully and scratched unassumingly at his chin. "I need your help," he grunted reluctantly, and the muffled sound of someone elbowing a ribcage followed, complete with disgruntled exhale and cruel snickering. "It was your idea," the Japanese man began, voice obscured as he obviously turned from the phone, and a muted female voice replied, with a scuffling sound ensuing before a new, feminine voice took over.  
  
"Howdy!" came the cheerful, albeit tired, woman's voice, a thick New York accent tainting her words in a purely unique and entertaining way, "You're Maxwell, right?"  
  
"Duo," he offered helpfully, speech slipping easily into the practiced rhythms of flirtation and casual interaction. "Duo Maxwell."  
  
"Likes James Bond, only not," she said and he could tell she was grinning, sensing a kindred spirit. "I'm Nancy Trishmore, host of today's episode of 'Heero Yuy Wrecks Another Person's Morning,' curre--" Another ribcage routine followed and she squeaked as Duo merged his eyebrows together, trying to place where he had heard that name before. "Cheater!" she called and then threw in a, "Sorry," for good measure.  
  
"Forgiven if you're as luscious as your voice," Duo responded, shifting his ankles into a mirror of their prior position. At least adjectives would always be with him, he reflected.  
  
"Pervert," Nancy said happily. "'Nyway, Heero's looking for info 'bout that Philip Cortez guy who died whenever ago. Said he hacked into what he could, which I'm thinkin' is sorta illegal, but who cares? He needs you to hack into all kinds of official sounding crap and save whatever wasn't used to death by the media."  
  
"Yes!" the braided man crowed, forgetting he was on the phone with someone other than one of the pilots or those privy to the eccentricities of their bizarre lives. "Something I can do without screwing up!" In the background, he could hear a derisive snort that sounded suspiciously like a Perfect Soldier swallowing a nasty laugh, and he flushed, suddenly reminded he was talking to one Nancy Trishmore. "Um…oops?"  
  
"Don't worry," she said encouragingly. "I do that all the time."  
  
Sheepishly picking at a loose cord of hair tickling the plane of his cheek, he summoned the nonchalant air that had served him well in the past, adopting a reserved look, as if he was weighing his options. "So…what's in it for me?"  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"Shane," Alex whispered, his voice hiccupping from tears and silent crying. He shoved weakly at his twin's shoulder, fingers prodding at the red pajamas and clutching as he pushed again, sniffling, himself stripped of his pajama bottoms and wearing a fresh pair of boxers. Shane mumbled in his sleep, rolling away from the blue-clothed boy, burrowing his head into the comforter and rolling his lips, exhaling softly. "Shane, wake up," he pleaded, rubbing at his eyes and nose, his sleeve dampened slightly. "C'mon, Shane, you gotta wake up!"  
  
After a minute or two of shoving and stage whispers, he shifted onto his back, yawning deeply and blinking his hazel eyes out of sync, adjusting to the darkness of the room and peering with the help of the small plug-in nightlight in a far corner. "Wha'sit?" he asked sleepily, stifling another yawn and flaring his nostrils at a muffled scent. "Whatcha cryin' for?"  
  
Alex hiccupped, turning his gaze downward, his face coloring with embarrassment, and he muttered, regretting, now, waking his brother, "I had'n accident."  
  
Shane's reaction was dutifully that of any young child confronted with a sibling's bedwetting problems, a mixture of horror, mortification, and secret amusement, all coming out in the form of an angry cry. "You wet the bed?" he roared, making a show of tearing the comforter and sheets off his own thin body, jumping off the bed and slipping on his heels, landing painfully on his rear. Rubbing his wounded person, he glared in elated disgust, continuing, "That's gross!"  
  
Bursting into a fresh assault of tears, his light brown face glittering in the yellow glow of the nightlight, Alex wailed, slamming his fisted hands into the mattress. "I didn't mean to!" he protested, shoulders shaking as he cried. "That's why it's'n accident!"  
  
"Ew!" came Shane's reply, and the boy on the floor nimbly leapt to his feet, shooting a venomous glare at his sobbing brother. "We gotta get Mama, bedwetter," he said cruelly. "C'mon." Alex, crying, slid off the bed, his pajama shirt wriggling up his tiny chest, and he trailed behind his counterpart, leaving their large room with only a few hiccups and sniffles betraying their movements. Angrily, the more aggressive of the two pinched him and he yelped, clutching his injured arm and glaring pathetically. "Stop being such a baby!" he ordered, coming to a stop in front of the large double doors of the end bedroom, framed on either side of the landing by tall Gothic windows, sleek panes of glass dyed a rich, clear blue. Hesitating for only a second, he rapped his fist on the right door loudly, curling his shoulders back and thrusting his chest forward arrogantly, his face steeled into a haughty, know-it-all expression.  
  
They stood in the blue-tinged moonlight for a moment, one hunched over and shivering in the aquamarine pool, the other waiting steadfastly. Finally, the door creaked open and their mother, a handsome woman of average height with long wheat-gold hair, patted a hand over her mouth, staring fuzzily at them. Before Shane could cheerfully inform her of Alex's crime, the weeping boy hurled himself forward, wrapping his arms around her bare legs, exposed by the loose tee shirt undoubtedly filched from their father's suitcase.   
  
"I wet the bed, Mama," he told her, his voice apologetic and his tears softening her knees. "I'm really, really sorry, and I didn't mean to, but I did, an' I already changed underwear'n everything."   
  
"Hn?" Relena murmured, her mind still catching up with being forced awake by Noce pushing her to get the door, and when it did, she cooed, bending down to scoop him into her arms with some effort. "Oh, sweetie, that's okay." Rocking slightly, she let him bury his face in her shoulder, still sniffling, and she gestured wearily for Shane to follow her in, patting for the door and moving it shut. "Noce, move over, the boys are sleeping with us tonight." Swept with the knowledge that a rare treat had been presented to them, Shane grinned and ran forward, all but somersaulting onto the bed, landing squarely on his father's stomach.   
  
"Why am I suddenly fifty pounds heavier?" Noce questioned absently, reaching down with his big hand to pat his son's head affectionately, before carelessly hauling the boy off and setting him in the space between the sides of the bed. Relena, with a care her beloved had understandably foregone, gently helped Alex in beside his brother, tucking him under the thick blue comforter and tousling his honey brown curls.   
  
"Our moonlight princes must protect us from the scourge of the darkest dragon," she informed him in a serious tone, winking at the twins, a gesture they almost missed in the pale light of the stars and the ever watchful moon, "lurking in the corner of our cavernous closet."  
  
"Ah," mumbled the dark man, his strong arm coming to rest over the shoulders of the twins, his hand brushing her own shoulder. "That would explain it."  
  
Alex sniffled again, callously passing his hand over his nose, wiping forcefully, and she smiled kindly, seeing Shane drift easily into sleep once more. "Did I ever tell you how I met your father?" she began, kissing the moist cheek of her son, smiling a second time at his slowly shaking head. "Well, I'd already met princes brought by stars and had waltzed with a diamond knight or two, but it was perhaps destined for me to meet, the day my carriage broke on the glimmering highway," and Alex beamed, relishing the poetic feel and medieval twists, "a lowly peas--"  
  
"Watch it," Noce intoned, rumbling voice low and humored. Relena subsided obediently, eyes twinkling with laughter, and her husband shifted, bringing his hand from her shoulder to ruffle Alex's hair, uncannily mimicking her earlier movement. "Did you learn anything tonight?" he rumbled to the small boy, hand sliding back to its place on her shoulder.  
  
"Yep," he replied, a note of slumber edging into his voice. "Shane's a butthead."  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"Damn blow-dryer," Duo growled, glaring evilly at the offending device and scooting the bathroom trashcan over with his foot, dropping it with reluctance into the relatively empty confines of it. He rolled his shoulders, the back of his white tank-top soaked through from the undeniably heavy wetness of his hair, the cloth plastered awkwardly to his skin and his hair threatening to yank him over with sheer weight. "You just have to break when I need to use the computer," he muttered, jerking a drawer open under the surprisingly clean bathroom counter and snatching up several large hair clips, an ensemble of glaringly bright colors and sturdy plastic. Separating a thick clump of hair from the rest, he wound it up, bunching it together on his crown and expending two clips to keep it in place. The procedure was repeated for a total of five more times before he was satisfied and the mess was no longer settled dangerously on his spine, though his shirt was still glued to his back in a decisively unwelcome manner. Studying his reflection and recalling the ordeal of buying hair clips - which, of course, were only carried in the women's department and that always led to fun questions over his sexual orientation, he struck a pose and said breathlessly, "I'm ready for my close-up, dah-ling."   
  
An impatient hum came steadily from his bedroom and he turned on his heel, grasping the doorknob and jerking it shut at his back as he crossed the small hall to his room, ducking through the doorway and hopping over clumps of items, identifiable or not, to the hefty laptop waiting on his bed. Happily jumping on the bed, he picked at his top, peeling it away from his skin with a suction sound and leaving an unpleasant humid feeling on his back. He wriggled his toes under the socks and lifted the laptop to set it, suitably, on his lap, over his gym shorts.   
  
"Let's see how screwed up you were," he muttered, clicking on the search engine at top and swiftly keying in a small government-sponsored organization's website, ignoring the Preventers' files for the time being.   
  
It had been far too long since he'd been able to do something absolutely, horribly, terribly, deliciously sneaky, and he was going to enjoy this.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Author's Notes: Ami wasn't in this chapter, frag it! I wanted to put her in, but it didn't fit well, so a scene that was meant to be in the third chapter is being pushed further and further off…she will, however, be in a great deal in the next chapter, which I plan on having be the obligatory 'flashback' chapter (one of a few, because it's necessary to explain some of the stuff happening). Look for angst-o-rama, Duo in a rebuilt church, and my complete idiocy when it comes to Catholicism (I'm a Protestant, so, apparently, that's my weak excuse).  
  
I'm placing the timeframe in mid-November, about November 17, and the day just completed in the story is Tuesday, I believe. (I am moving too fast! Must…place…obstacles…in story!) While it would be nice to think the colonies run on the same timetable, I'd doubt it; that's why it's around three in the morning where Quatre lives, and about eight at night on M-13. The colonies also have different simulated weather conditions at different times - it's summer on Quatre's and fall/winter on M-13, while it's snowing on Earth.  
  
Nancy Trishmore, author of several 'Romance of the Week' novels, and possible romantic interest for everyone's favorite antisocial Perfect Soldier is none other than…Naru! As in, Usagi's civilian best friend, for the three seasons before she apparently fell off the face of the planet. *ducks for cover, praying loudly for all explosives to be poorly aimed*  
  
A thousand thanks to Kaiya-chan, who's probably wondering what it is I'm on that has me churning these out so quickly. Muahaha! Inspiration! And quite possibly I'm starting to act like a mature writer, finishing a story and so on. Or maybe I just want to get to steamy scenes…*snorts* That'll be somewhere around chapter, what, twenty-six? *goes dreamy-eyed at prospect of a long story*  
  
Standard disclaimer still applies; what, you think I managed to get both series because of a hefty inheritance left by an unknown relative who apparently knew me? I can only dream so...Distributed to www.FanFiction.net and other fine locations in the Shijie Solar System..  
  
Me likes feedback and you give feedback. Please? They make me a better writer, or...eh, I just like reviews. Review, please, or send e-mails to alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com.   
  
(Side Note: Right...thanks to Damia-san for pointing out the problems with formatting; apparently, when I uploaded it, either the school computer or FanFiction.net screwed up my Notepad file, deleting the spaces breaking off the sections. I had that problem the same day uploading stories in a different account, but was able to avoid it by using '--~--' for whatever reason, as a simple '*' was doing nothing. I'm working on the Spanish, too, 'cause I need to know what I'm doing...*sweatdrops*) 


	7. Requiem: Memoriam Un

Rain dotted the hillside as she stood in place, hands by her side and dark blue eyes fixated on the beautiful, horrible monsters striking at one another. She could not hear her mother yelling angrily for her to get inside, away from the violence outside so she might become a fixture of the violence in the apartment, and so she kept her back to the swollen city, perched on its outskirts. They were like giant, clumsy dancers, enormous mobile suits that lashed quickly, and then slowly, at each other, ringing the air with the dull thud of machine guns tearing. Crouching on the grass, feeling the cold wetness pierce her knees, she cheered in a quiet voice as her Champion, the one she deigned so through the miracle of imagination, fought powerfully, giving little ground to the hated enemy.  
  
Even from the distance, she could feel the change in the air, the sudden shift of temperature upwards, warming the molecules in the air and charging them into kinetic motion. A flash of shivering, flexing green burned her eyes, a smooth curving streak of light and heat and power bursting forth from a metal staff, one that dwarfed most buildings in the slum areas she was standing outside of. The ground quaked beneath her feet and she slipped, tumbling down the soaked hill, her wet hair clinging doggedly to her skin as she dug her fingers into the softening soil, desperate for purchase in the thick mud as the grass tore away. She looked over her small shoulder, through the rain and the darkness of the storming clouds, and she could hardly breath.   
  
Her black Champion, tall and cold, struck like a god would a mortal, the swift concussive blast of the glowing scythe smashing into heavy metal knocking her into the hill as it shot through the air, pinning her and holding her until the air in her lungs was stale and her eyes were watering from the vibrations spinning in her body. Once she was freed from the shock-wave, she inhaled deeply, sucked air into her lungs, and stared at the dark monster, frightening as it watched the smaller beast's smoking remains settle on the ground.   
  
Her Champion, her warrior for this moment, was still for a minute more, and it began walking steadily, with loud booms, over the terrain of the beach away from her hill, slipping into the water. The rain was slick on her face, and she, years later, would remember the wetness coursing over her as she watched it vanish.  
  
--  
Requiem: Memoriam Un  
--  
  
On the train, she stayed quiet and motionless, a perfectly docile child with no shrieks or loud cries accompanying her as she kept her eyes cast downward, facing straight ahead. Not once did she look out the window and the elderly women sitting across the aisle murmured in pleased tones amongst themselves, about the sweet daughter - adopted, surely - of the dashing man with her. How delightful, they whispered, for a child kind enough to be so very obedient!   
  
She knew not to speak, knew it would hurt if she did. He would punish her later, again, if she spoke, and the horrible pain in her body, traveling up and down her pre-adolescent length, would strike her as well, bringing tears to her eyes as she tried to breathe in short gasps to fill her lungs. The soft lights lining the aisle tossed the glistening highlights in her hair, shining them a dark green color amidst the blue, nearly black, and she kept her pale hands clasped in her lap, resting over the silken skirt of her white dress, a gift for her tenth birthday. The sun was setting in the backdrop of the inky sky, the last few defiant streaks of dark fire fading slowly. The mild pink vanished bit by bit from the clouds turning dusky periwinkle, and so its glaring fire had abandoned her body to the glow of night. She was as the moon, small and pale, with the colors of the ocean dashing in her hair, her eyes, and she kept still as a flower on a windless eve before the hunter trampled it underfoot.   
  
She wanted deeply to run to the bay rushing past, toss herself into the water and laugh at the smooth coolness on her skin, like she had once, running after a great black monster into the beautiful, endless sea. But that was forbidden now, as was reading and speaking in the languages he deemed heathen, filthy and disgusting, and she forced her eyes to stare blankly ahead, away from the abominable temptation. His stiff black suit, pressed and cleaned, filled her nostrils with the scent of nothing, unassuming and easy to hide behind, and she moved, just a bit, away from him, closer to the window, trying to escape the scent and the truths he told her. To fill her mind, stop herself from the evils of hope and wistfulness, she remembered the Book of Truths, whispering in her head in his awful tobacco-cracked voice, one after another, addendums and footnotes and amendments listed, added, footed at the end of each mental page.  
  
Minutes trickled into hours, stations bringing a sudden lack of movement before building speed once more, people coming and leaving and talking, humming the cloud of the world she was no longer a part of, until there were none in the long car but her and the-speaker-of-truths. It settled in her stomach, a dead weight, a lead orb meant to swell her with hopelessness and helpless acceptance, and she waited for the things he did when no one else was about. Nothing was done and she wondered if this was something she must add to the Book of Truths, fix onto the trailing end of a twisting rule. Must be silent but speak when asked but not if by for it should no something yet and furthermore not exactly only if--  
  
"Here," he said in his stained voice, the tilts of the One language coating it. "We leave the train here."   
  
She stood obediently, her eyes lowered that they might not sin and stare hatefully at his face, at the painful hair on his chin and the foul gleam in his own eyes. She took his hand when he offered it, stepping slowly, carefully, to keep from jarring the aches in her torso.  
  
"We are going to the house you will stay in," he furthered, and she shuddered, a tiny shake in her shoulders. "You will stay there and be a dutiful bride, mistress of the house. The others have been waiting for you as I have taught you the ways." She was a good girl as they walked through the vast terminal, meek and silent and listening, while he brought her to the shuttle.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Her weeping was excused in the dark, her face buried in the loose dip of cloth between her knees, pulled up into scissor arches, and she ignored the sticky stains darkening the white dress, the sheets of her new bed, cast in the pale glow of the security lights ringing the estate on Colony M-09 C33081. The gashes tracing over her ribcage had been reopened, spilling freshly, though slowly, and she hoped, in a morbid wish, that she might bleed to death, though he made sure every morn to 'heal' her as he so desired. Perhaps the one relief was his cleanly compulsion, his need to leave to wash his body free of blood, of semen, of dirt, giving her the time at night to find what she needed to clean the room. She would have peace, for a few hours, and she felt her tears slow, her shallow, erratic breathing slowing robotically. She slowly lifted her head, wiping hands over the slick wetness on her hollow cheeks, and gasped against her will, her mouth forming a startled O.  
  
A woman stood at the foot of her bed, the elaborately carved door to her room cracked open, and she tried to remember hearing her enter, failing. She had a deep dish held in one hand, her skin the fairy white of Scandinavian blood, and, tucked in the arm of her other, a small animal, a ball of softly mewing black fur, a thin tail lashing irritably. A kitten, she realized, and she stared dumbly at her as she set the animal on the foot of the bed, taking care not to spill the dish, before making her way around the large bed to clamber on it, crossing her legs as she sat in front of her. She lifted a folded washcloth from the side of the dish, placing the dish itself in her lap, over her pale green apron, and lightly pushed aside the torn shoulder of the girl's dress, pressing the damp cloth on the sore recently cut along the pale skin. She glanced, unsure and thrown off-balance, at the soft terry cloth, then back at the woman. She had smooth cheekbones and slender cheeks that flowed gently to her sharp chin, her white eyelashes long but so light as to appear invisible. The curtain of her hair was a sleek swath of moonlight, cut tragically at her chin, falling straight. Her face was shorn of eyebrows, the skin above her eyes tender and red, but her eyes, the color of blue-tainted ice, were deadly, thinking and planning.  
  
"Hello," she said in a voice that was breathless, the voice of one who is preparing for a leap of faith. "You're his bride, aren't you." Her voice brooked no question, a rhetorical sentence that repeated a statement to affirm it for her own benefit. The cloth moved from her shoulder to her chest, nimble fingers tugging her shredded dress down. She flinched, pulling back in basic instinct, and the woman smiled in bitter knowledge, pushing forward and touching the wet cloth to the highest cut on her chest, water mixing with the thicker substance of blood. "Don't worry," she continued, a cool strictness threading her words in the One language, and she subsided slowly, relaxing muscles. "I am Dorothy," she added, dipping the cloth into the crystal pool of water and wringing it, applying it in gentle swiping motions down her abdomen, sweeping clear the red liquid. From the first gash, a thin bubbling line of crimson was forming and she reached into a pocket in her apron, cautiously maneuvering to avoid spilling the dish, and she pulled a tube of gauze out, handing it to her. "You can put this on, right?"  
  
She nodded, eventually, and gripped the end with her teeth, lifting and ripping a length free, gripping it between fingertips and applying it to the cut, repeating the process as she followed her cleaning. It hurt, of course, but the bleeding had been stopped and for this she was grateful, a smile, tentative and innocently jaded, curling her lips shyly.  
  
She smiled shortly, eyes narrowing thoughtfully; the light pink tank-top she wore exposed her slim arms, white like the rest of her body, and she could see scars that mirrored her own. "Don't let him win," she told her, "Don't you let him ever win." And she did not understand what the woman meant, but she smiled anyway, and she smiled coolly, taking the washcloth from her body and placing it in the dish. Dorothy placed it to the side, pulling the protesting kitten to take its place. "She's yours," she explained, pinning the mewling creature down with a gentle grip on her nape, and she, the kitten, bit her hand, working her jaws in a feisty mood. "He does things like this every so often, to make his guilt fade. You can name her what you wish."  
  
Younger eyes met older eyes, confusion in their blue depths, and she saw the understanding in her ice blue ones.  
  
"He took your name from you," she said, absently petting the chewing kitten's small head, her ears set to twitching spasmodically, tail flicking happily. "That's a bitch of a trick, taking those precious things from you before you're locked." It was one of the terms that, for outsiders, would make little sense, a vague statement that needed deeper perusing to click, but she recognized it, acknowledged it with a sorrowful look. The white ice woman released the kitten, which yowled and leapt from the bed, skittering across the floor as she sallied forth to attack the drapes framing the vast, multi-paned window lining one wall. Chilled hands cupped her face in a friendly way, one vastly different from the way she had been grasped as of late. She murmured, in a voice that was warning, but without malice, "Break his rules before he can break what's left of you. We are the only ones left, and you can not lose this battled," and then, studying her curious face, she questioned, "Are you forbidden from speaking?" At her silence, her gradual nod, she smiled slyly, eyes narrowing in an encouraging manner. "Break it."  
  
She smiled back, feeling the trill of heady danger, and whispered, "Okay."  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," he murmured, crossing with practiced ease, forehead, chest, left shoulder right shoulder, and he knelt in the shadows of the center aisle, facing the altar and the subdued cross behind it on the wall. A sense of unease crept along his shoulder blades, an irrational sense of discomfort at leaving his back unprotected to the doors back a ways, and he exhaled noisily, salvaging his intentions before he turned to check, make sure he was not being followed. War was over and he hated knowing his body might never learn to adjust to full relaxation. "It has been nine days since my last confession." On one level, he knew it was more accepted for him to enter the confessional and speak to the head of the church, but he had never been much of an acceptable Catholic and…it did not feel right.  
  
"I feel awkward," Duo said after a long moment, his knotted hands held at a level angle from his waist, neither fully raised in proper reverence nor dropped low in forgetfulness. "I haven't been here in…years, not since they started rebuilding it. And I've never really believed in You the way Quatre does, 'cept he's a Muslim, anyway, but he's the kind of guy who'd be devoted and all." He blew his breath out, his long bangs fluttering out of his eyes at the gust of warm, stale air, and he rolled his violet eyes, reviewing his last sentence and thinking sarcastically on his gift at pointless rambling. "Not that any of that was logical or whatever." He fell silent, thinking and chewing on his lower lip, before he figured he might as well get it over with.   
  
"Well, let's see…I've lusted after a woman I'm not married to, almost killed a guy, was pretty much drunk off my ass one day which was when I almost killed the guy, and I swore, a lot. Enough to make Wufei look like a saint, and he swears all the time." Shifting as he fought the ever-present urge to fidget, do something, move around, he released his hands, let the worn rosary plummet from his thumbs to the folds of his jacket, and crossed himself a second time, muttering, "Amen." He fiddled with the plastic loop on the zipper of his garnet zip-up, the fabric a sleek kind that reminded him greatly of vinyl, and he wryly noted he had worn the same outfit those four years ago during the Mariemaia conflict.  
  
Duo stood, his braid swinging like a heavy pendulum, and he rubbed his palms over his tightly fitted pants nervously, stepping reluctantly to the ponderous, simply decorated slab that was the altar. A respectful image of Christ was shown, palms held down in a forgiving manner, over the heads of kneeling disciples, on the fore of the altar. It took a swell of effort to force his eyes down; his hands already traced the letters carefully etched into the stone.  
  
His voice was hollow and empty when he spoke, echoing the words he read and felt, filling the arches of the cathedral and fitting into the corners, the rafters.   
  
"'In loving memory of Father Maxwell and the many followers of Christ our Lord who died that day in AC 188. They are with the Lord our God in heaven and this church is dedicated in their honor, that they might never be forgotten by those who follow in their steps along Your path.'"  
  
He hated crying and he loved the memories that sparked the crying, his fingers clutching at his braid as if it was a lifeline, swallowed in the river that was After Colony 188.  
  
--  
  
"That's stupid," he announced loftily as he wriggled onto Sister Helen's lap, opting for her gentler touch. He beamed when she hugged him, her face patiently smiling, and she lifted the brush on the small table beside her chair in an elegant gesture, running it through his loose brown hair. Father Maxwell smiled indulgently, willing to hear the boy out. Duo preened a bit, enjoying the attention and the feel of the brush smoothing out kinks in his locks, and he all but purred, kicking his chubby, though long, legs, already showing signs of what was to come. With some force of will, he directed his attention back to the topic at hand, gleaming iris eyes prepared for the stimulation of arguing, an activity he loved dearly. "I think fasting's stupid," he explained in greater detail.  
  
"Fasting," Father Maxwell pointed out kindly, "is a way to grow closer to God, to clear one's mind of other thoughts. It cleanses oneself for a better relationship with God."  
  
"Well," Duo drawled, squirming when Sister Helen tickled his side, "if God does exist, why would he want you to not eat? Eating kinda keeps people alive, y'know." He giggled as she stroked his neck quickly, in playful motions, tilting his head to one side in a reaction to keep her fingertips away. She laughed softly and began braiding his hair steadily, looping it carefully and neatly. "B'sides, it's hard to think of other things when you're hungry," he added knowledgeably, his serious expression at odds with his impish appearance.  
  
"Of course, how silly of me," admitted the priest, his lined face folding into a subtle smile. "It must have slipped my mind."  
  
"Perhaps you're hungry, Father?" Sister Helen suggested.  
  
"It may be," he said thoughtfully in reply, sharing a humorous look with her.  
  
Duo glared at both, at the woman and the man he had grown to love as parents, and he crossed his arms sulkily, pouting adorably. "You're making fun of me!"  
  
"Of course, dear," she agreed, tying off his braid and pushing him lightly off her lap, pecking his cheek as he slipped off, landing silently on his feet. "Now, scoot, and get to chapel for prayers."  
  
He slouched to the door, a dark child surrounded with light, and he paused, whirling around and lunging at them, surprising the pair with a tight hug each. "If I hafta not eat," he mumbled into Sister Helen's habit, grudgingly giving up a smidgen of his pride, "I won't."  
  
Sister Helen merely laughed as Father Maxwell watched on, amused.  
  
--  
  
And then he was nineteen again, ripped from the world of AC 188 into the less volatile one of 199, and he breathed shakily, stumbling backwards and grasping the rosary, fingers tightening painfully around the gilded silver cross dangling at its apex. "I'm sorry," he managed. "I'm sorry, God, for whatever I did that made them pay, I'm sorry, please." His grip snapped the thin string of the rosary, scattering beads of polished wood, painted traditional red. He stared, unseeing, at the rolling orbs, before letting rage and hatred and the dark things that he had fueled himself with for every day of his life for the past eleven years explode past his sorrow, destroying his sense of sacred things, respect, trust, in a wave of inner death, temporary but brutal.  
  
"I hate You!" he screamed, curling his fingers around the beads and lurching to his feet, hurling the specks of wood at the grieving, broken, loving man carved delicately on the vast ornament behind the altar, streams of painted, etched blood pouring from his hands and feet, silent and frozen. "What kind of God leaves His people to die?" He crouched and scrabbled for more beads, springing up in the flowing motion and tossing the beds in harsh, powerful movements, his face swallowed in the flood of tears engulfing his essence. "You're a shittin' bastard, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, whatever the hell You claim to be; You couldn't even save the people I loved, You let them die!" The bowed effigy of Jesus took the abuse, the pieces of blessed wood that struck His face, the face that wept for those left behind, and Duo could no longer see, his eyes clouded so by the tears that refused to leave him be. He screamed things he did not mean, things that had nonetheless burned in his soul, stopping his flinging weapons when his fingertips brushed the silver cross, closing around it and holding it to his palm until it felt as if it was part of his being. "Hypocrite! You lousy, filthy hy-hypo--"  
  
He crumpled to the floor, folding his body together and weeping in absolution, strands of his dark hair melded to his face, and he nursed the wounds he had let fester for over a decade, hidden masterfully over time. Closing his eyes, his eyelashes clumping together from the gentle wetness of tears, he began praying in his heart, this time sincerely, and he wondered if now the wounds could heal.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
When he came to her the night some time after she began to violate the sanctity of the Book of Truths, he did not smear her with red liquid, thick and warm and coppery, nor did he pound his vile flesh into her, but he grasped her arm and wrenched, letting her feel something tear in her shoulder as Dragon Kitten meowed plaintively, upset at seeing her mistress handled so, but she was silenced quickly with a thrust of his heavy boot. She screamed, then, did something she never had before and fought him, clawing his skin and screaming damnation at him in the heathen languages with a voice filled with such pain as a child should never know. She cried as she was dragged down the hall, hoping Dragon Kitten would appear behind her, ebony tail waving curiously behind her tiny body, even as she knew it would never happen. He slapped her once, twice, and then five times, leaving her cheeks puffed and red, bruising as her lower lip and her nose bled, the latter thankfully not broken. Her voice died, retreating in her throat, and he hauled her up by her short hair, clumps of her blue-black bob coming loose in his bony hand, mingled with the droplets of crimson dripping down her scalp, as he tossed her to the floor of a massive room she had never before seen.  
  
"Clean, you whore," he snarled, striking her side with the same boot he had killed her precious Dragon Kitten with, and she felt the long scabs along her abdomen tear open once more. She snatched up the pathetic yellow sponge he gave her, dipped it in the porcelain pail of water, and stared emptily at the crusted red brown stains on the polished ivory floor, following, a sickened knot scratching nauseatingly in her gut, the pooling trail to the transparency of Dorothy.  
  
He left her staring at the other thing most loved, the other thing precious to her, blue eyes large and riveted to the deep slit across the pale expanse of the swan throat, silver light hair dyed pink from her own blood, her black dress ironically immaculate, neither torn nor bloodied. Eyes were shut as if in a dream, nearly invisible eyelashes sweeping her spotted cheek, and she was horribly still, quiet and empty. The floor he desired clean, she knew, distantly in the part of her mind that was not shattering, slipping chaotically under the control of his words and his power and the conniving Book of Truths she was unconsciously adding to, and with that fraction of free will left in her, she touched the sponge to the throat, gently dabbing the blood away and peeling a ribbon out of her hair, dipping it in the pail before carefully tying it over the slender gash. Dragging the pail over, she skimmed off her own ripped dress, once white but turning dark pink, and dropped it in, bunching it up and letting the cloth soak in water. She lifted it out methodically and gathered up the beautiful pale hair, bundled it in the wet dress, not minding the chill cruelty of the room touching her naked, battered body. Tender wiping motions took the blood out of her hair, left it sleek, wet, and clean, and she arranged it around her pale face, moving her lifeless hands into a peaceful form over her shallow breasts.   
  
To protect her precious ones, she learned that night, she would do what he said, be the good girl he wanted her to be, and slowly she forgot what it was to be other than a possession.   
  
For that, she realized, was what she was.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Author's Notes: No, those aren't my personal opinions on God (Duo's rant). I love Him very much. :] And here, again, the plot thickens.  
  
Confessional is based on what little I know from attending Catholic church with my Italian best friend. You rock, Joanna.  
  
Hundreds of thanksies to Kaiya-chan for being the Greatest Beta-Reader in the World. Salute ya! You're a wonderfully kind person, especially with me constantly worrying you don't like my sending chapters so quickly. I love having a beta-reader so very much! And I finally edited this. 0o; It certainly took me long enough, you know. (I changed some edit-y things, though, and, yes, everyone, I know edit-y is not a word. *winks*)  
  
Standard disclaimer; same distribution.  
  
Feedback can be left at www.FanFiction.net or sent to alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com.   
  
'Through God all things are possible.'  
-Traditional  
  
To My Reviewers: I wish I had the time right now to thank each of you personally, but I don't. *sad face* Just know that I love you for taking the time to comment on what I've done! It's very appreciated and never fails to lift my spirits. *hugs for all* 


	8. Requiem: Dixieland

The words spilled from her heart, her mind, every memory from the crevices in her mind, and she wrote them as day bled into night outside, the pen scripting in carefully formed letters the rules and lessons she had learned over time, taught by him. Her heart was sore, her chest feeling weary and worn as she breathed shallowly, the cotton dress taken an unknown time before by the slender nurse she did not trust, wondering briefly where Jessica-the-nurse was and feeling a moment of panicked fear as she worried another precious one had been stolen from her grasp. But before she could bolt through the door, find her before he could tear her away and butcher her for the evils she, his belonging, had done, the memory of Maxwell-god-of-death needing to know what everything, nothing, something, was arrowed in the back of her mind and she climbed awkwardly, bare but for the bandages wrapped about her, onto the quilts carefully laid on the table to make it a bed, picking in her swollen, clothed hand the felt pen and writing steadily once more.  
  
It grew easier over time to write in the clumsy forbidden language, her hand moving faster, though it ached as the pen cap thrummed against a covered sore each time it bobbed; she was skilled at ignoring pain and it rarely bothered her as she continued, her shoulders straightening with each page she completed, front and back, words neat and arranged perfectly as she wanted them to be. It became half a stack left, and she was aware when the bubbling warmth of Golden Mina entered, watching her gently and quietly, keeping her at ease, and once she looked up to see her nearly drowsing in the chair Maxwell-god-of-death had left. Golden Mina left, eventually, as all seemed to, and she kept the light on, letting her write and pour the evils and blessings and regulations continuously, noting addendums and footnotes as she pressed on.  
  
A tear, a drop of glittering silver, slipped down her face, twisting along the curve of her cheek and plummeting in a suicidal drop to the page she was working on, landing with a soft plop and webbing out for a second, fuzzing ink and staining the paper a darker shade, but that too she was skilled at ignoring.  
  
--  
Requiem: Dixieland  
--  
  
He shot up, startled and confused, his hand streaking up to his face to rub worriedly at the swell of pain in the center of his forehead, and he blinked, trying to recall what had woken him. Glancing down at his laptop, one of the corners suspiciously close to the place he must have hung his head at, he groaned and passed his hands over his face, pushing up slightly to refresh his nerve endings and exhaling noisily. "What happened to the days I could run on five hours of sleep a week?" he grumbled, thumbing at the worn corners of his eyes and rolling them in a refreshing motion, affixing his gaze on the data pouring down the screen of his corner. Have to remember, he answered mentally, grudgingly, I'm pushing thirty here. God, I'm getting old. A perfunctory check of his battered watch revealed a happy trio of fours and he sighed, arching his arms behind his head, stretching his torso back as well, feeling the muscles tense, pulling out in a delightfully soothing manner.   
  
Duo tapped absently to his left, fingertips poking the giving softness of his mattress and touching abruptly the hard curve of the coffeepot. Moving the laptop from the dip of his legs, he punched the screensaver on and pushed his legs out as far as they would go, nearly collapsing at the relaxing pleasantness that trailed from the ritual. "Lord, that felt good," he smiled tiredly, dropping back and feeling his eyes cloud over at the enveloping warmth of his bed, sheets and comforter bunching up in a welcoming nest. Judging by the coolness he could feel along his hand, the coffee had grown significantly colder over time, and he pulled his legs up to his chest, maneuvering so he could peel his socks off. Cracking his toes, he rolled over, swerving up and into a standing position in one smooth movement, staggering at the sudden rush of dizzying blood. He shook his head doggedly and grabbed the angular handle of the coffeepot, holding it thoughtlessly at his side as he trudged through the veritable sea of junk on his floor, not even bothering to lift his feet from the floor.  
  
The hallway was subtly lit by a lamp left on in the living room and he stumbled with a gradual sense of direction down it, veering when he came uncomfortably close to a wall, moving in the basic area of the kitchen. He felt his way into the blessed room-of-rooms and grabbed the microwave door's handle, jerking it open and shoving the coffeepot in without much though, swiftly typing in the relatively small amount of time needed to warm it. "Faster," he yawned, skating over the tiles of the floor to the vid-phone in the corner, flicking the screen on and pressing his finger firmly on the O speed dial as he often found himself doing. He was mildly amazed when the connection was actually picked up, and he stifled another yawn, grinning obnoxiously at the stiff face of one Wufei Chang, his coal black eyes registering a form of weary acceptance.  
  
"Maxwell," Wufei muttered, his black hair pulled into a loose ponytail, not yet combed. "What a surprise." This was followed by a Chinese word that sounded eerily like a friendly swear, and Duo flashed a toothy smile in delighted reply.  
  
"How'd you and Sally sleep?" Duo asked innocently, and the other former pilot gave him a dangerous look that promised death in a variety of slow ways. "Well, I'm just being polite!" he protested, lifting his hands in a defensive posture, trying to keep his violet eyes open in wide incredulity, though the twitching of his eyelid as his body angrily attempted to rebel and force him into slumber effectively destroyed that image.  
  
"Perfect," sighed Wufei, stroking his temples in a familiar, calming gesture as he closed his eyes as if to count to keep his temper in check. "Who did you kill this time?"  
  
"Your wife?" Duo suggested with a brilliant smile.  
  
"I'd kill you first," he answered in perfectly timed response to the aged joke. "Do you mind telling me why you called?" In a reaction that was decidedly against his nature, his dark yellow face split in a vicious yawn, uncontrollable and hilarious. The American started snorting, his broad shoulders quaking as he suppressed the need to choke on his laughter, tears welling up in his eyes; if it had been any other person yawning in such a manner, it might not have been so comedic, but as it was Wufei, it was easily explained away. A haughty glare was sent in response to the poorly contained humor, and he crossed his arms over his chest, his dark garnet sweater blurred by a temporary wave of static that jittered from the bottom of the vid-screen to the bottom. Habitually, Duo smacked the device and released his hand from its grip over his mouth, shoulders still moving in chuckling motions.  
  
"Ah," he wrinkled his eyebrows together, scratching furiously at his tangled, half-undone braid, "I've got something hovering in the back of my head and I can't figure it out. I was hoping talking to someone else would help, maybe."  
  
"Brilliant," came the irritated reply. "Why couldn't you annoy Quatre? He's a much better person to talk to; he won't kill you for ill-timed gags."  
  
"Can't!" Duo said cheerfully. "Relena and company are visiting him and his wife, and you know how the twins are on the nerves of most sane people. I'm not worried that Quman will crack so much as I'm afraid Rachelle will go wild woman on him. Don't want to call during that." Wufei's face took on a decidedly 'please don't explain that' expression, and he chuckled, making a never-mind wave with his hand. "Sorry for bothering you. See ya later, 'kay?"  
  
Wufei nodded curtly, allowing a brief smile to cross his face, and he signed off, abandoning Duo to the mercy of a snow-filled vid-screen and the shrill racket of the microwave signaling its function was, indeed, completed. Coffee, he informed himself dreamily. Caffeine in horrific amounts…  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Mariemaia Kushrenada stretched her milky arms above her head, feeling nervous muscles relax finally, and she motioned to the other woman working studiously in their cubicle that she was taking her lunch break, scooping the manila folder she had been finishing up and dropping it in her lap. "'I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland,'" she sang softly, wheeling out of the cubicle and swiftly shoving herself down the symmetrical aisle separating halves of the floor in the Preventers headquarters, slowing as she neared the elevator and thumbing the 'up' destination button, continuing to sing as she waited, drumming her fingers on the cushioned arm, "'Pretty mama, come and take me by the hand, by the hand.'" A ding sounded smoothly and the doors slid open with a soft hydraulic sound. Placing the folder in her mouth, she clamped her teeth on it and rolled the large, spidery wheels over the mild jarring bumps into the clean white chamber. "'Take me by the hand, pretty mama,'" she added, spitting the folder out into her hand and rolling her tongue in her mouth, straining forward to reach the button that would send her to the uppermost floor.   
  
It was a painful reminder of her paraplegia, the numbness that began weaving at her slim hips and quickly folded into full, senseless paralysis before it reached her mid-thigh, and she felt bitter tears sting the back of her eyes, and then she blinked powerfully, forcing them back. Damn it, she was not going to cry! She could do this, she knew she could. Stuffing the folder in the deep pouch velcroed to one of the arms of her wheelchair, she leaned forward as far as she could, her fingers wavering and unfolding to their full length, falling short; the slanted footstool attached to her wheelchair was pressed against the metal wall beneath the pad, keeping her from completing her chore. The doors began to shut and she gritted her teeth despairingly, a sulky look crossing her face, her sleek red hair slipping over her pale blue eyes. In a subconscious move to soothe her mind, she murmured, singing the tune slightly, "'Come and dance with your daddy all night long.'"  
  
A lean, dark hand caught the left door and pushed it back open, and she stared, momentarily too startled to roll her wheelchair back, but she caught herself quickly, scooting to the back of the elevator politely, smoothing the ironed length of her blue business skirt, her knees exposed where it cut off and she hastily pressed them together, worrying her panties might be flaunted.   
  
"Trowa?" she said when the vastly taller man stepped in, feeling no sense of oddness for calling him by the name of her dead uncle; she'd never liked that original Trowa, in any case.   
  
The doors finally clicked together and the elevator hummed, hovering in place as they stared at each other, both surprised, though Trowa's face was carefully collected into his usual quiet mask, his dark green eyes sparking in recognition. It had to have been at least three years since she had seen the reserve Preventer - by moonlight, she thought with a sneaky grin, Clown of the Year - and his hair struck her as the first obvious change, his bangs cut remarkably shorter, even as they still covered his eye, longer than most bangs were maintained. She knew she looked different, as different as someone who could hardly show off gained height could look, with her legs finally gaining some muscle mass after years of strenuous physical therapy, her arms naturally being stronger and leanly defined, and, although it had taken eleven years since she first hit puberty, she finally had something resembling a chest. And, of course, it would kill men to notice her for something other than the hunk of metal she needed for transportation.  
  
"Mariemaia," he finally greeted in his standard monotone and she rolled her eyes, clasping her hands in her lap and gazing steadfastly ahead, longing to be able to stand up and just press the damn button. "What floor do you need?"  
  
She realized she was gaping and she shook her head slightly, chasing away the bemused emotion that someone had recognized her disability and offered help instead of dancing around the subject, afraid of offending her. "Nineteen," she answered, and he pushed it. "Are you visiting Aunt Une as well?" she guessed.  
  
He nodded, retreating to the opposite corner, crossing his legs and closing his eyes meditatively.   
  
Studying him for a moment, Mariemaia shrugged and, catching where she had ended singing, she started up again. "'I'd like to hear some funky Dixieland, pretty mama, come and take me by the hand, by the hand.'" Rolling her thin shoulders, she squeezed her eyes shut and swayed her head to the rhythm playing in her head, flamboyant strawberry red hair flashing brightly in time. "'I want to honkey-tonk, honkey-tonk, honkey-tonk, with you all night long.'"  
  
Trowa's eyebrow arched as if questioning her general sanity, and she valiantly ignored him.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
His mouth worked its way open, an exhausted inhalation of air sounding softly as his jaw cracked audibly, and Duo winced, rotating it with his hand and feeling for injured tissue, relieved when he found nothing wrong. Adjusting the familiar duffel bouncing on his shoulder, he dug the necessary i.d. from his pocket and, with something resembling an annoyed frown, he tossed the patient i.d. over the counter to Russell, who, predictably, was ogling the centerfold of a tasteless 'model' magazine. "Hello," he drawled when the weedy man made no move to tear his eyes from the magazine, much less acknowledge his presence. "I kind of need to do my job…is that okay with you, Russy-baby?"  
  
Russell glared up at him from under his stringy blonde hair and snatched the patient i.d. from its precarious position on his thigh, hardly bothering to glance at it before clearing the psychologist. As he handed it back over, releasing it as soon as Duo's fingers had touched it and leaving the man to grab at it quickly before it could fall to the ground, he remarked snidely, "Love your braid."   
  
Flashing a grimacing smile, he clutched the patient i.d. with his personal one and hurried through the glass door as it unlocked, muffling with a cough, "Bastard." A juvenile, pleased feeling swarmed in his thoughts and he beamed cheerfully at the guard, who looked as awake as he felt. "'Morning, kiddo!" he greeted with a bright wave and dashing smile, flashing the identification at him and grasping the handle as the guard moved to the side, mumbling a sleepy acquiescence. Pushing the door open, he flipped the cards into his warm jeans pocket and, as he glanced at the place he had left the chair at his previous visit, hooked the undersized chair beside the guard with his foot, managing to scoot it into the room inexpertly. Setting a quirky smile on his smooth lips, he pushed the chair straight to the wall and, twisting his fresh braid into its traditional place along his spine, the brush of its end sweeping his hip, switched his gaze up to the table.  
  
Aimee was leaning back, her thin legs peeking from under the red cotton of a new hospital gown, folded into a meditative position, and she had her tiny hands planted firmly on her legs, wrinkling the end of the gown toward her feet from the force she was applying. A small black comb, wielded expertly and gently by Jessica, was passing through her short dark blue hair, glinting the traces of highlights as the strands shifted in the false lighting. Her doe-soft eyes, a lighter shade of whispering seas, flickered to their corners, darkly lashed eyelids blinking in casual succession as she noted his presence, and she looked ahead once more, closing her eyes as her shoulders lifted and, shuddering, fell back down, as if she was steeling herself.   
  
"How did yesterday go, Doctor Maxwell?" the plump nurse asked in a careful voice, tucking the comb into her breast pocket and fluffing the easily combed hair, shifting it into the bobbed curves it was kept in. Aimee opened her eyes and, cautiously unfolding her legs, the splint-shoe on her ankle scraping clumsily on the exposed metal of the table, she palmed the pen he had left for her, scooting forward and leaning over the few sheets of paper separated from the larger stack. Her writing, he noted, had improved a great deal, hands moving at a greater speed down the shallow lines, occasionally popping up to a previous line and writing superscript numerals, he supposed.  
  
"Hmm?" he answered, still smiling though he saw the shadows under her eyes had darkened; had she stayed up the entire night writing? "Oh, yeah, it was great." Duo looked at the nurse locking the quilts on the ledge in the corner, patting them into stern place, and he admitted truthfully, "She's a relatively fast learner compared with some of the people here." Like, say, he added mentally, Dennis Buckman. Jessica nodded distantly and quietly exited, tugging the door shut at her back. To be secure, he leaned against the door and shoved briefly, smugly smiling as it clicked loudly into place.   
  
The sound of metal scraping along paper echoed nearly noiselessly in the confines of the room and he saw her frown, a mere downward twitch of her light pink lips, and she studied, for a still moment, the paper, shaking the pen hastily in her hand. Making a few restrained squiggling motions in the margin, her frowned deepened, nearing a pout, and she set it down on the paper, narrowing her eyes. He leaned back and down into the uncomfortable chair, shifting in a reflex to try and find a way of sitting naturally in it before he gave up with a laughing smirk, plopping his elbows on his knees and sewing his fingers together, his chin coming to rest on the conjoined backs of his hands. It felt, now, as if he was testing her, wanting to see if she could figure, on her own, what was wrong with the pen and find a solution.  
  
She straightened her back, eyes glittering and cherubic nose wrinkling thoughtfully as her fingers, not quite as bony as they had been a simple two days ago, traversed the length of the silver plastic, pausing at the butt of the pen. Slipping the cap off its dormant spot and setting it at the top of the paper she was working on, she rotated the black end, popping it off the spiral screw base and sliding it out. Tugging off the core of the pen, she placed the smaller cap and the hollow tube of the body beside the clipping cap on the paper, lifting the clear plastic, the rounded tip glinting faux gold. Aimee studied it for a few seconds, pinching it between her forefinger and thumb, and then she scooped the remains of the pen into her hand, hopping gracefully off the table, freezing as her wounded ankle struck the floor. He raised his head from his hands, unlacing the fingers and shifting his arms back so his palms, in turn, covered his knees, watching her with a form of pleased surprise as she nervously stepped toward him, eyes flickering like a shy child's from corner to corner, passing over the door.   
  
Stepping quicker, hobbling a little with her limping leg, she grasped his wrist with her free hand in an unexpected move, her face whitening at her own boldness and he saw her throat tense and swell when she swallowed apprehensively. "Um," he began before wisely biting his tongue until it bled a few coppery drops, watching her face as she tightened her thin grip on the wrinkled cuff of his green button-up. Duo offered her his palm, curling his long fingers out into a pacifying curve, the creases in his palm exposed to her. With a few jerking movements, she dropped the pen's corpse over the creases, letting the pieces fall slowly to insure they did not roll off the slope of his hand. Touching his fingers with hers, she pushed lightly, fearfully, curving the honey lengths over the dissected pen and tapping them into place. She took a step back, inhaling as though she had ended an overwhelming run, and quickly shuffled into the direction of the table, her thumb rubbing anxiously over the bandage coating her left hand as she clambered back onto the metal, hunching her shoulders up to block him from seeing her face, clutching at the three or four sheets of paper left unwritten.  
  
Duo blinked, stunned, trying to stop his mind from running in circles at the peculiarities of this new job - he'd only been working with her three days! How in--well, he'd be damned twice over.  
  
Jessica-the-nurse had told her it was okay to touch others, not to panic or fear the skin of a man, and so she had, thinking of Dorothy-the-lost-sister and her whispered urge to break the rules, abandon the lying truths. Pulling her knees to her chest, shoulders arched up, she shielded her face and hands from view, touching her fingertips against her palm and fighting to quell the swell of fear, horror, awe, pain, bubbling in her mind. She was not supposed to touch a man, it did not work that way but the opposite, men touching her, so why did his skin feel smooth and simultaneously calloused, clean instead of the layer of grime perpetually on him-who-saw, and she breathed deeply, her fingers twitching. That foul beast of trust squirmed where it had swirled into her fear, calming her breathing and her heart and the frantic rubbing of her hands as she fought to scrape away the touch. He would strike her now, without any fragment of doubt, even if the worming trust said he would not.   
  
Taking one last quaking breath, she let her shoulders fall slowly, her knees sliding down inch by inch, and she forced herself to look at Maxwell-god-of-death. He was smiling at her, a different smile than the feline one he always seemed to have, the mocking, dangerous smile, and it was oddly comforting, a breathless smile exposing pale teeth that were not perfect. "Hot damn," he swore, but it was a comedic swear in place of the crude harshness she was conformed to hearing. "You are a fast learner!"  
  
Why was he smiling like that at her? She shrank back from the foreign, pure expression on his face, suddenly thrust onto ice she was not trained to handle, and she crumpled her eyebrows together, her lips thinning as she stared blankly at him. What was wrong with him that he could do everything so differently than he was supposed to, as a man and with her a woman-doll? It hurt to look at him, the panicky feeling of confusion and change in her head, and she swiped her head away, down, fixing her eyes to the paper claimed in her hands. Cloth murmured from the door and she squeezed her eyes tightly, sucking air sharply to keep the horrible tears from pushing down her face, wondering if now he would do what he should do. She hated thinking of Maxwell-god-of-death, the new Man, doing the cruel requirements and it surprised her that it hurt so much; he had been so inexplicably kind to her and it stung, it burned and stung and flailed, in her chest to imagine him showing cruelty and blood and murder.  
  
"Here," she heard his husky, plain voice say and she, with effort, opened her eyes, their depths whipped into deep obsidian aqua waves. Another pen was held in his long brown honey hand, offered in simplicity to her, and she stared, hard, at his face, seeing nothing but a playful existence written on his heart-shaped features, slightly upturned nose and thinly full lips, with dark violet eyes shaped somewhat like almonds, nothing with the expected promises etched over. "You have to say thank-you," Maxwell-god-of-death reminded her fruitlessly as she, fingers dancing almost imperceptibly, touched the smooth silver of its casing and pulled it free, closing her entire hand around it and smiling fractionally at him.  
  
Duo sighed and stood back, crossing his arms over his chest and watching with curiosity as she uncapped it religiously, twisting it over the butt of the new pen and pressed the tip gently to the spot she had left off at, wrist pulling down in experiment. The sight of the felt ink inspired her and she picked up her pace immediately, studiously working swiftly, her body loosened and, for the first time, nearly relaxed. As he let the movements, crisp and exact, hypnotize his mind into ignoring analyzing procedures, he found he was talking quietly to her, telling one of the precious stories of the Maxwell Church and the family he found there.  
  
Perhaps they could heal her like they had healed him once.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
She watched without seeing as Tanya scurried about the kitchen, stirring a large pot of a thick stew and checking habitually on the countless pastries baking to perfection in the wide oven, her mouth perpetually set in a cheerful smile as she basked in her element. The cook was relishing every moment of the vacation the other kitchen servants had taken for the winter season, finally able to do what she wished to without worrying someone else might botch it up; Tanya was a devout believer in the adage of 'if you want it done right, do it yourself,' and it showed nearly constantly.  
  
Biting into the lunch the delighted chef had prepared for her, Rachelle rolled the exotic taste of the stuffed pita in her mouth, trying to identify what had been placed in it and smiling as she recognized the dish as being one of Quatre's favored snacks, a Middle Eastern-Mediterranean treat from ages past. Closing her dark violet ebony eyes, she tilted her face toward the false sunlight streaming through the sliding glass doors forming the wall of the kitchen at her back, leading to the long, elaborate marble second-floor landing. In a sense, she felt alone in the house, knowing Relena and Quatre had gone to the Winner offices, checking on the true reason of her visit, the framework for a new colony and the suburban homes meant to be constructed on it for the unfortunate people living in the Earth slums. Noce had taken the twins as soon as the Dorlian family had tumbled out of the guest wing, promising to give them a tour of the colony, which probably meant the three boys were utterly lost.   
  
She opened her eyes and, sighing gently, wistfully, turned her head to stare at her left hand, raising the tanned ivory at her eye level as Tanya hummed tunelessly, happily. Her silver wedding band, delicately carved with twisting fire patterns and vines twining about the flames, was antique finished, giving it a beautifully aged look. It was the kind of quietly romantic thing her husband would choose, fitted to her ring finger perfectly, and she smiled sadly at it, turning her wrist a bit, letting the light reflect off the uneven surface, a glittering paleness that touched her face. An unbidden memory dove up from the oceanic floor of her mind, one of a conversation held so very long ago, before they had even begun their courtship, a casual talk brought by her outburst at an escort to the formal occasion.   
  
"It was rude of him," she remembered Quatre saying in his quiet voice, a soft tone pitched above a whisper, "to say things like that." He smiled prettily, an odd thing to think on a man's face, but suitable on his, and he leaned on the lattice beside her, watching her face with the politeness of an acquaintance.   
  
"He shouldn't even talk about having children with me," she hissed, her fingers tightening around the polished stone and feeling strands of her hair, lit by the lights of the party glistening inside and the Earth moonlight above, drift from her wound bun, the pearl webbing loose on one side. "I'm tired of men assuming I want to wed and bear the children when they don't even bother to listen to me. Why the hell would I want to be engaged to a," she waved her hand in the air impatiently, silver bangles shining as she sought the proper word, and he laughed, a kind sound that tightened her chest and stopped her fledgling rant in her throat. He was laughing at her and it was not a cruel, condescending laugh, and, against her will, she cracked a smile.  
  
"My entire family," he told her, contrasting with her sunshine-and-shadows body with his moonlight river one, "is composed of test tube babies." The young man she only knew as Mr. Winner, head of one of the most influential families on Earth or in space, a man perhaps a year her junior, gave her a smile, then, and she found it was no longer as painful anymore to smile back.  
  
In the kitchen, she laughed silently, tossing her raven hair in glimmering waves and nibbling off another small bite of the Arabic dish, lowering her hand into her lap, over the smooth ankle-long skirt of her pale green sleeveless dress. She smiled to herself, closing her eyes again and swallowing, placing the pita on the glass plate and exhaling mutely.  
  
Two very large hands dropped onto her shoulders and squeezed dangerously, and Rachelle shrieked, eyes snapping open and hands flying up to grab the hairy wrists connected to those hands, yelling an obscenity Quatre would be horrified to learn she knew. A familiar chuckle resounded and she noticed, with some angry embarrassment, the entire Maganac Corps had crowded into the admittedly enormous kitchen during her daydreaming. "Damn it, Rashid," she swore, standing as he released her shoulders and turning to face him, eyes flashing like explosive daggers, "would it kill you people to give me some warning?" He merely grinned widely at her and she rolled her eyes, begrudging him a reluctant familial hug and a tug at his graying beard. "You're getting old," she warned.  
  
"He won't listen," an amused woman's voice answered, and Rachelle looked over her shoulder at Iria Winner, shoving herself admirably through the press of large, vested men, the countless members, old and new, of the Maganac Corps moving to make room for the pale woman with brown-gold hair, waving around her ears. "And Quatre refuses to think Rashid's too old to lead the Maganac Corps." A grumble of dissent shot through the dark-skinned men and they quieted quickly when Rachelle granted them a frightening scowl, her round lips dangerously tight. "I'll go to the guest wing, okay?" Iria added, motioning for the mob to follow her.  
  
"I don't think they'll all fit," Rachelle pointed out, her eyebrow raising skeptically, and, with a sigh, she corrected, "We have another guest wing, through the black doors." Iria saluted and latched onto the arm of the man nearest her, hauling him bodily along.  
  
Rachelle rolled her eyes again, a smile tugging at her lips, and she turned to Rashid, patting the table. "Sit down," she said. "I'll call Quatre and tell him some friends have…unexpectedly arrived."  
  
The massive man winced and, picking guiltily at his streaked beard, muttered an apology.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
"What were you singing?" Trowa asked as the elevator doors, quivering with the tremors of the chamber coming to a stop, slid open with a hushed hissing, revealing the long landing, decorated only with sparse furniture and a few potted plants on coffee tables, that led to Une's spacious office. He asked for it had managed to stick itself in his head rather easily, an addictive, short melody, and he was not used to being annoyed by a song he could not shake. Mariemaia gave him a quick look, her lean arms moving to grasp the wheels of her wheelchair and thrusting them forward, propelling herself toward the automated door at the end of the landing, located behind a reasonable metal detector and an edgy guard.  
  
"Classic honkey-tonk funk," she explained, grinning catlike at him, the elevator closing at their backs and vanishing down the shaft. Stopping in front of a large, overstuffed sofa, out of place amongst the rest of the immaculate upholstery and the thin bits of furniture, she mouthed, 'Get us when she's ready,' to the guard, who nodded in understanding and checked the gun mounted to his side nervously. Rookie, she thought with a laugh. Trowa's eyebrow arrowed up again and he sat elegantly on the sofa, all long limbs and tan skin, dryly, sardonically emotionless. "You don't believe me," she accused him, slitting her snowy eyes and folding her white arms over her small breasts, trying her damnedest to glare down her nose at him. "The only job I can do here is the sensitive computer work for Aunt Une, and that hardly ever takes too long of a time," mostly because, she continued mentally, I spent my formative years arguing and fighting spam wars with Gundam pilots while in the hospital, "so what else is there to do besides shut down porno sites, send e-mails to Miss Relena, and download music from centuries ago?" She sniffed, raising her small, round face, her bright hair falling out of its casually styled formation, and ignored his quietly amused expression. Privately, she thought he was much more fun as an uncle than the first Trowa Barton; besides, he worked in a circus, to boot, and that was in and of itself a great deal cooler than being an egotistical jerk.  
  
"You are a very strange girl," he told her in his quiet, dry voice, Preventer jacket loose on his tall frame, and she wondered idly whatever happened to her own Preventer jacket, picking at a loose thread on her worn pink blouse. "What was the song?" he repeated patiently, his supple fingers buttoning the row of manicured plastic on his jacket, closing it over his standard black turtleneck, and she opened her mouth to insist she had already told him when she noticed she hadn't, and so she closed her mouth and choked on her own rebuttal. It had to have been some kind of genetic fallback, she thought grumpily, for her to have all the moments of stupidity when no one else in her family, that she heard of, seemed to.  
  
"'Black Water,'" she moped, lowering her chin and playing with her red bangs before sweeping the glossy strands behind her right ear. "By the Doobie Brothers. You can only get it bootleg from the Internet; they don't sell it anymore because the demand isn't high enough in the market."   
  
"Ah," came his simple reply and she glanced at him, annoyed, revising her earlier opinion on his uncle-ness rating and wishing for a miracle so she could kick him in the knee. It was completely beside the point that she was twenty-one now and therefore required to be too mature to wish so; it was her favorite song as of the past month and she refused to let him mock it. She thought he was mocking 'Black Water.' It could be particularly difficult trying to discern what exactly he meant with 'ah,' considering whom it was coming from and the lack of tone he used constantly. Would be kind of nice to kick him, anyway, on the basic idea of it all.  
  
A brief buzzing sound came from the guard's vicinity and he started, nearly reaching for his gun, and she stuck her tongue out brattily at him as he flushed and grabbed the walkie-talkie on his belt, listening to the buzzing static of whoever was speaking. Trowa gave her a disapproving look - Trowa! - and she, very slowly, drew her tongue back into her mouth and rolled her lips in, fixing her gaze on the shining leather of her clogs and pretending she was not blushing in mortification. And if the guard had seen her and he told, which he would if he had, Aunt Une was going to give her hell.   
  
"Okay, just walk through here," the guard interrupted her thoughts and Trowa smoothly flowed to his feet, not so much walking as floating across the floor to the hideously short, if wide, metal detector erected a few feet in front of the door. Mariemaia grinned, feeling a sense of disassociated payback as he was forced to stoop over, and gamely wheeled in the direction of the metal detector as the Greek man unfolded his body to its proper height and waited for her to finish the momentary ordeal. She knew from past experience the detector would not pick up her wheelchair, thank God, and pushed on through.  
  
And, of course, the metal detector went off.  
  
"Oh, for crying out loud!" she snapped, tossing her hands in the air and throwing her body back against the cushioned seat, her face solidifying into a decisively freezing snarl.   
  
The guard looked at her nervously and, after checking Trowa for help and not receiving it, stammered out, "W-well, Miss Kushrenada," he stumbled over the pronunciation of her name, "are you c-carrying anything else metal on you?"  
  
Realization dawned on her and she squelched the wave of piteous moaning threatening to dominate her voice, reaching for the taut edge of her skirt and jerking up. Trowa quickly averted his eyes, the dark emeralds finding the wall infinitely more interesting, and the guard shot back two or three steps, his brown eyes all but bulging in his face. "You perverts," she grumbled, exposing the simple black holster wrapped around her undefined ivory thigh, a small one-shot pistol hooked into the sheath adjusted for its size.   
  
The guard cleared his throat and, eyes still kept from her thigh, meekly requested, "Miss Kushrenada, you are not permitted to bring a gun into Lady Une's office." He coughed discreetly into his hand and, once more looking for help not forthcoming from Trowa, added, "Please."  
  
"I'm barely old enough to drink," she said in what she knew was her adorable little girl voice, one that fit her childishly youthful looks, and batted her fiery eyelashes for added effect. "And I'm a cripple. How good of a shot could I be, and why would I shoot my own aunt?"  
  
"Um," the guard mumbled, guessing, "you wouldn't?"  
  
"Damn straight!" she replied cheerfully, tucking her skirt back into place and patting it over the holster, smiling brightly when he obediently flicked the switch to open the sliding door. "Uncle Trowa," she threw in the title almost unconsciously, having already decided he would have to take the place of the biological uncle he had seen die, "I'm decent." He nodded, visibly startled, and entered the office, and she flashed one more charming smile at the guard, wiggling her fingers cutely at the man as she spun the wheels and followed the swarthy man into the tastefully classy office of her adoptive aunt.  
  
"When'd you hire him?" she asked Une as soon as the door was safely shut, sliding back into place and locking protectively. Mariemaia fingered her ribbon-sleek red bangs into place for the umpteenth time, pulling the file out of her pouch and Frisbee-ing it expertly across the room to her aunt's desk. "He didn't even try to argue with my 'I'm a poor cripple, I can't fire a gun' excuse. Has he even checked the roster of the best marksmen in the Preventers?" She frowned suddenly, her slender eyebrows knitting together in a show of worried anxiety. "I am," she rounded on her aunt, who was smiling, amused, at her, "still on the roster for marksmanship, aren't I?"  
  
Une simply laughed, a low chuckle, and, flipping her light brown hair over her shoulder, switched easily into business mode. Leveling her gaze at both Trowa and Mariemaia, she spoke quietly, almost urgently. "I've called you both because of complications in the Philip Cortez case. Agents tying up strings found some inconclusive documents that…imply we've just chipped a tooth on a shark, so to speak."  
  
For one of the only times that the small redheaded woman could recall, Trowa frowned deeply, his eyebrows, or the one she could see, tilting unreassuringly. Aw, crap, she thought with a sigh.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Duo had long become silent, his mind noting tiny things and logging them into carefully categorized place, as if he were organizing a thick pile of vanilla folders into a tall, metal filing rack. She was a quiet person, as he had heard and evidenced, though it was still unclear whether that was a natural part of her personality or simply a result of the years of abuse she had suffered. She learned and adapted quickly, catching on to a concept without showing an overt amount of effort, but she was easily frightened and at times was even quelled by her own actions. Touching, unless initiated by her, was strictly forbidden, though she accepted minimal touching around her face and wrists. Spoke Spanish and he assumed she was familiar with speaking Anglo-Japanese, to judge by her capacity of writing it, although he suspected that might be a foolish assumption, especially taking into account the little time he had actually spent with her.  
  
She would probably have some form of a social phobia or dysfunction because of the abuse and the apparently sheltered life she had been forced to live, and he expected she would dress much like an albino in public: long clothing that obscured her skin and hid her body from view. This, of course, depending on her managing to assimilate into society, which would be difficult without help, and he knocked the back of his head against the wall facing her table straight on, staring at the ceiling and, remembering Dennis' mocking words, sending an intimidating look to the ventilation system.   
  
Three days, buddy, Duo reminded himself, you're rushing the process here. In the words of Sally, sss-lll-ooo-www ddd-ooo-www-nnn…only without the obscenities Wufei had happily stuck in the middle, interrupting her when she was trying to convince him of the benefits of taking his time. If he remembered correctly, Wufei still had the bruise on his shoulder from the punch she had given him in uncharacteristically violent irritation. That had been one of the highlights of his last eat-over at the Chang household. He grinned at the memory.  
  
A shuffling sound broke his concentration and he blinked, lost as he attempted to draw his collective consciousness back to the present, shoving off the wall and staring at Aimee. She was carefully straightening the pile of lined paper, covered front and back with writing a computer would envy, tiny footnotes at the bottom of each page, numbered precisely. "You done?" he asked, eyes streaking to the door as he heard a creak near it, the slab of metal opening to show Jessica balancing a tray identical to yesterday's on her hip. He inclined his head in awareness of her presence and shifted back to the compact woman, blinking when he saw her jut the papers up to him, nearly stabbing him in the chest with the stiff stack. "Oh, ah," he articulated, moving to take them, gripping carefully, "thanks." She stared at him, her unnerving deep eyes traveling his face before she nodded her head in silent reply, fingers itching at her left leg as she twisted around to accept the tray.  
  
It wasn't until Jessica had yet again bullied him out of the room, insisting she needed him to leave so she could feed the poor duck, that he shot up straight, startling the dozing guard as he stifled a whoop and grinned shamelessly. She might be reluctant to speak, and when she did, only in Spanish, but they had been communicating, through the ancient art of body language. Pounding the guard on his shoulder, knocking the man's green cap off his head, he laughed, braid bouncing along his back as he jogged, duffel scooped from the floor where it had been abandoned in the hall. He stepped through the whooshing door, having pressed his palm against the inner release button, and, giving Russell a friendly flash of his middle finger, read the bold title scripted on the top. "'The Book of Truths,'" he read slowly, shouldering his duffel into the crook between his neck and the bump of his shoulder, vanishing down the white hallway and moving past the first corner, pausing in the middle of the shiny white corridor.  
  
Bizarre sentences covered the page, complicated rules that contradicted one another in intricate paradoxes, and he flipped the first page over, scanning its back, and palmed swiftly through the pile, occasionally picking one out to recite softly. Finally, one, near the front of the stack, caught his eye and he read it, somewhat stunned, the buried memories of an unresolved crime stirring to the surface, "'All that is precious is taken, bled and no more, for if he knows, he will take. Dorothy Catalonia is dead.'"  
  
Duo swallowed, breathing roughly, and he stripped the duffel off his shoulder, unzipping it with a tearing motion and dumping the numbered pages in, except for the one held wrinkled in his hand, fumbling for his cell-phone and flipping it open. He typed in the first number he could think of and waited, anxiously, for the other person to pick up. "Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon," he chanted, blurring the words together, and a machinated voice apologized, informing him the other party was not currently connected, please try again later.  
  
"Damn it, Heero!" he exploded, snapping his cell-phone shut and hurling it into the shallow depths of the duffel, ripping the zipper closed and taking down the corridors. If he had to break into Kino's office to tell someone, then damn it all to hell, he would.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Author's Notes: The chipped shark tooth thing might skip by some people, and that's completely understandable. Sharks are continuously losing and regrowing teeth throughout their lifetime; it isn't unusual for a shark to lose several teeth while eating, and for a shark to chip or lose a tooth is, essentially, no big deal. Being something of a shark-o-phile, I thought it might be a fun exercise.  
  
On a side note...this is the seventh chapter of 'Requiem' and I'm still on the third day time-wise. 0o; Holy freakin' Louise, what'm I gonna do? It is kinda cool, though, that I'm still working with dedication on this fic (take into my mind my past procrastination on other fics) and the Word file is 54 pages long. *cheers* And I've only been writing for three weeks?! And now it has a /plot/...it wasn't supposed to have one of those! (And, yes, I wrote this chapter over two weeks ago. But, again, my family's still scheduled for the trip to Egypt, so I'll need to post before leaving.)  
  
The title of this chapter and the lyrics Mariemaia was singing were both taken from 'Black Water' by the Doobie Brothers. I heard it on the radio when I was starting this chapter, and I loved how it sounded, so that's my excuse. Yay! The 'dead Sally' joke was paraphrased from the 'Episode Zero: Preventer Five' comic, in which (according to the Viz translation, as I lost the files I downloaded with the literal trans.) Duo jokingly asks if he should use real bullets when he 'kills' Sally and a smirking Wufei comments he'd kill Duo first.   
  
And, of course, thanks-a-million to Kaiya-chan (as usual!) for reviewing, noting what needs to be broken apart, and not attempting to beat me with a stick for sending her chapter after chapter, with maybe two or three days in between. :]  
  
The standard disclaimer still applies (unfortunately), and so does distribution to www.FanFiction.net and fine quality locations in the Shijie Solar System ('Shijie' being Chinese for 'Earth').  
  
Feedback...it hypnotizes you...you will give feedback...it is necessary and vital to the continuation of your existence...give me feedback...via review bar or to...alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com...feeeeeedbaaaaaack...  
  
Thank-yous to my reviewers, as follows (and not necessarily in order):  
  
UNgoddess, Girl-chama (ah! you both reviewed! Thank-you!), WindRider Damia (who pointed out the icky formatting error, for which I grant you Internet hot cocoa), Kaiya-chan (*huggles Kaiya-chan for being neat-o*), Insane and Psycho (*glomps for being such a doll*), Mistress of Ice (more Ami-focus coming up in a couple chapters, when it will /stay/ Ami-focused...and Duo-focused...*sweatdrops*), Misfit Dragon (I'll e-mail you back soon! I have a sentence I'll need help on, too), ICE, Tira Wolf, The Silent Wanderer (all of whom get fuzzy teddy bears for fun reviews), and azn_otaku (sorry I didn't mention you earlier *sniffles and offers apologetic teddy bear*). Your comments really are appreciated, every single one.  
  
*peeks in subspace pocket* Oh, dear...I'm out of teddy bears. *sighs* 


	9. Requiem: Soubrette

She stared at the paper with a mixture of disbelief and muted horror, shaking her head and running a long hand through her hair, pausing when her fingers brushed the loop of her ponytail and closing her green eyes. "This is," she said slowly, shaking her head, flashing her eyes up to meet his unusually serious eyes, "impossible." He shook his head, too, impatiently, his trailing braid whipping back and forth at the sharp severity of the motion, his hands, fingers curled to his palms, resting on her desk, knuckles balancing on the edge.   
  
"How is it so impossible?" he urged, his lean body, cloaked in loose black jeans and a green button-up, moving back, then forward again, as if he was struggling with something. "Nobody ever managed to solve Catalonia's disappearance. And I might be jumping to conclusions, but I'm pretty damn sure Aimee wouldn't write something like that unless it happened to be true." He dipped his head forward, the brush of his braid sweeping his abdomen, tickling skin beneath the cotton shirt wrinkling as he bent his body in a hunched position. No love had been lost between him and the vicious woman, but he had respected her and been concerned when she disappeared years back in AC 199.   
  
"It's just," she sighed, setting the paper firmly on the grooved mat inlaid in the wood of her desk before her, covering her face with her strong hands and breathing. "It's so bizarre," she finally continued, moving her hands down her face, cupping her mouth and chin, her eyebrows pushing together. "Word's been that the Cortez mess was the tip of an iceberg, but…"  
  
He shoved off the desk, fingers clutching angrily at his braid and pushing through the weave, entangling in the tightly bound tendrils. Tugging down, he growled softly, staring moodily out the window, over the buildings in the colony, at the wetness pouring down from the piping system above. "I know I've only been at this job since Monday," he said quietly, "but I'm already sick of being left out of the loop. I don't need you to break the rules and tell me; just…report this to someone, okay?"  
  
She sighed again, pinching the bridge of her nose and chewing on her lip. "You'll need to borrow an umbrella from downstairs," she told him in a subdued voice, carefully controlled. "They didn't advertise this rain as well as usual."  
  
He shrugged, rapping his knuckles against the desk as he stalked across the floor toward the door, an inexplicable irritation on his face. "Yeah," he exhaled deeply, casting one last look through the wide window, streaked with dead diamonds, the metal wreath of the colony weeping steady tears of darkest silver.  
  
--  
Requiem: Soubrette  
--  
  
She glared formidably at the computer screen, fingers hovering indecisively over the delicate keys and eyes squinting as she tried to choose from the words in her mental thesaurus. As a writer, she found it to be her greatest challenge, the opposition of seeking to use an adjective in a unique way, and so she found herself on the ninth page of a romantic short story, staring blankly at the screen. The one man she had ever had a seriously romantic relationship with had, as might have been morbidly expected, died when she was still a teenager, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband-praise-God-in-heaven had been anything but romantic, and, with a sense of inner doom, she swiveled around in her slightly broken computer chair. And immediately, her face contorted into a mask of skepticism, comical horror, and exasperated affection as she watched Heero systematically rearrange the contents of her spice cabinet, something she knew now was a sign of boredom. Go outside more, she ordered herself, rolling her eyes.   
  
"Before you manage to destroy my filing system," she said cheerfully, the seven o'clock morning light and the tea sipped earlier fueling her into a brighter mood than before, and he glanced at her, "I wanna ask ya somethin'." Taking a breath, she looked at him for the go ahead and was granted a view of him crossing his arms over his white dress shirt, his immovable scowl a bit friendlier. "Now, y'don't hafta answer," she continued as if to placate him, holding her hands up peacefully and tilting her chin up, "but I'd be glad if you do." Inhaling, Nancy questioned, schooling her features into an award-winning expression of severity and keeping her tone teasingly serious, "You bein' a man and all, what d'you think is a good description for 'breast?'"  
  
Heero stared at her for several long seconds as she bit down on her cheeks to keep from snickering, her smoke blue eyes glittering dangerously, and he, stiffly, returned to his chore of organizing her spices, albeit more slowly. An odd sound escaped her lips, like a quiet squeak of helium, and she clamped her hands over her mouth as she swerved in her chair, back to the computer screen, shoulders vibrating from the suppressed laughter. He switched his blackened blue eyes to her back, subconsciously reading again the letters of the political statement on the back of her sweatshirt - 'Voting is against my religion; try again later' - and placing the rest of the collection of herbs in, doing his best to keep them in some sort of order. Snorting under his breath, he closed the cabinet silently and stalked across the floor, grabbing one of the chairs from the small double-seat table and flipping it around to face the computer desk-and-chair she had set up in the corner. He seated himself quickly, leaning forward to stare at the modem and making a rude noise in his throat.  
  
"Do you have any shame?" he questioned vaguely, and she twisted in her chair, looking at him strangely.   
  
"Don't do that!" she whined, startling him, and she winced at the noise of her own voice, scratching distractively - for him, in the least, though he hid it skillfully - at her collarbone. "Sorry," muttered Nancy, quickly pressing the yellowed ivory keys needed to save what she had written, and she minimized the file before clipping the screen off. "Anywho, ya wanted me to spiel, right?" Heero's legs crossed at his shins, sprawled out fully, and he, as per normal, hooked his arms over his front, the thin tail of his left eyebrow quirking the tiniest fraction upwards. He was, in his own suitably non-vocal way, telling her she might as well spare them both the aggravation of senseless banter and she grinned approvingly, casting her own legs out and sticking her heels on the in-steps of his feet lightly. His response was an affectionate glare, and she picked at a loose string in the ribbed cuff of her sweatshirt. "Well, the obvious step would be to do that genetic stuff everyone hypes: blood, skin, whatchamacallit, and so on." Taking one look at his indecipherable face, she blew air out noisily, her lower lip closing temporarily over her upper lip. "And I'm guessin' ya already tried that. So," she trailed the word out, tucking frizzy carrot hair behind her seashell ear, "then you do the next obvious thing and advertise it everywhere, t.v., newspapers, movie screens, and soda machines, askin' for help or testimony or people overridden with guilt, blah-blah." She cut off and stared at him, her mouth still hanging open slightly from talking, and she gave him a concerned look. Either she was a genius or he was about to kiss her, the two not necessarily being connected, and she found it unnerving, as neither was going to happen anytime soon.  
  
"Obvious," he murmured, eyes flattening in the curious way they had when he was thinking furiously. "Of course, the best route is always the one overlooked," and he grabbed her hand, springing to his feet and yanking her out of her chair, sending the worn device spinning unevenly. She yelped and, instinctively, pulled back, which only served to trip her up, her sweatpants being a size too large for her legs. "Get your shoes on," he grunted at her, jerking to a stop at her front door, and she dusted at her hair, glaring weakly at him. "I need you," he continued in a manner that was most assuredly not a passionate one, cementing her opinion that he thought she was a genius.   
  
Blinking, parts of her mind still pushing at gears to catch what precisely had just happened, Nancy stabbed her feet into her worn sneakers, the backs crumpling easily under the mild weight of her body. "Wow, since you're being so dashingly romantic about it," she managed breathlessly, snagging her keys as he yanked her impatiently out the door, his hand like a band of molten steel on her wrist. The cloth of her shirt was wrinkled up at her lower arms as she tugged the door shut, flipping through her key ring and slipping the keys into their allotted spots, twisting firmly. "Ow!" she squealed, nearly falling down the steps leading to the thin sidewalk. "Not so hard! Are we taking your car or mine?"  
  
He angled her around the front of a smooth blue car she would never have noticed in a crowded lot, popping the door open and helping her in. Bemused, she obeyed without a word, fingers clawing at the seatbelt and pulling it over her chest, clipping it into place. "Hey, this is the driver's side!" she protested as he leaned in the opposite side, and then she mouthed soundlessly as she saw the steering wheel constructed plainly on the right half of the vehicle. "Stupid Japanese cars," Nancy grouched, rotating her shoulders to loosen the uncomfortable tightness of her collar from the sudden seating.  
  
The road whipped up, the motor revving and the car jerking into the street, and she cried out, her hands flying to prop along the dashboard to keep her back against the chair. With a wary glance at the snow-sleek roads, at the sky still fairy dark, she asked in a tight voice, "Don't drive so fast, okay?"  
  
"Life is cheap," he said and she caught the hints of a mocking smile on his lips, as if he was speaking a private joke.   
  
"Not when I'm in the car it isn't!" she snapped, and she was both angered and cheered when she heard a low, majestic laugh tumble from his lips, coloring the air something new with the sound she had not before known.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
Mina hummed softly, hauling her purse to the clean counter of the receptionist's desk, flicking on the lamp perched at the head of the computer. A single bright beam of light tore through the dimness of the area, punctuating the air with a shine the hallway's glow could not produce, and she undid the clasps on her purse, slender fingers picking at the stacks of magazines and other not-so-essential essentials. Guiltily checking she was truly alone in the waiting room, her blue eyes picking out the shadows in each corner, along each wall, she carefully dug out the latest Nancy Trishmore novel, a thick book with a noticeably red cover, 'The Duchess of Fire' scripted elegantly at its top. A gratuitously enflamed plaque was engraved directly below the writing, an image of a rather grand-looking man clutching possessively at a young woman who seemed neither fully horrified nor exactly attracted, and she mashed aside the urge to giggle like a teenager on her first delectable date. Placing it in a spot of honor by the computer's slick hard drive, she tugged out a twin set of thin books and held them like she would a vial of plague, sticking her tongue out briefly in a show of her lack of appreciation for the subject matter, a hefty box of pre-sharpened colored pencils following. "Chemistry coloring books," she muttered with a telling roll of her eyes, dropping gently the cardboard box of pencils on the gaudily bright books and collecting the entire package in her arms, precariously punching in the password.  
  
The door sighed and jerked open, huffing its compressed air out exhaustedly, and she hurried across the tiled floor, her thick blonde hair catching the lamp's shafting light in the elaborate coifs of her braided bun. Idling into the hall, she tapped the release button carefully with her hip, pausing for the door to slide shut once more before stepping briskly in her attention-grabbing orange clogs down the narrow length of the patient hall. B-902 was easily attained and she shifted her burden so it was pinned between the curve of her hip and the lean press of her arm, adjusting it slightly to ensure it was balanced and picking the master key out of her flaring skirt's pocket, pushing it into place and thumbing it in the appropriate direction.  
  
Mina was careful to move the inner light switch up, pushing the door open gently and stepping inside with a soft, "Aimee? It's me, Mina." The lights were marginally duller inside, from frequent usage where it had rarely been used in the past, and she figured, quickly, they would last a bit longer. The girl was, as she expected, sitting up straight in her makeshift bed, skin uncovered but for the swathing bandages and the grey-black quilt serving as a comforter. Dark blue eyes adjusted to the light and thin fingers scratched hesitantly at one bandaged leg, and Aimee studied her silently, curiosity on her face in place of fear or simple awareness.  
  
"Hi," the blonde woman smiled, edging the door shut and mentally noting to ask Doctor Anders why a guard was not secured for the witching hours. Waving the books and pencils from their position at her side into a giving form in her hands, she stepped gingerly forward, moving in subdued, slow movements and keeping a kindly smile on her lips. "I've noticed you don't have much to do and you aren't much of a sleeper," she explained, her voice nearly ducking into a whisper out of respect for the quiet pacifism on the younger girl's face. "So I brought you something to do." Aimee scrambled back, folding her legs up and her arms betwixt her legs, tilting her head down to better view the coloring books as Mina shifted the two onto the lower quilt, flipping the cover of the top one open to expose the rough first page, an easy drawing of a curved laboratory bottle.  
  
No, Mina realized, not simple awareness, for her dark eyes, those eyes reminiscent of death begetting life begetting death in the exotic swirls of deep whirlpools, sparkled from inside, crackles of intelligence and the desire to know, to understand, shading everything. Breathing out, she found she was staring at the girl, and she blinked, shaking her head to clear her mind and touching the open coloring book with her hand, holding it still as she drew the second one from beneath it. She stood the box of pencils carefully, working the top open and drawing out a random color, flipping the second book open to reveal a simplified diagram of a tree, the sort a child learned in kindergarten - roots, trunk, leaves, branches, bark. "See, you use the pencils to color the picture," she explained in a gentle voice, rubbing the pencil, a pitch brown, over the bark, leaving textured trails. "And, well, you can color any way you want to." Satisfied with her example, she slid the pencil back into place and tapped the container in Aimee's direction. "Here. They're for you."  
  
Aimee hesitated, looking warily up at her and reaching slowly for the golden box, and she pressed her lips together as if in thought, grasping the pointed tip of the same pencil and pulling it, as well as two lighter shades of brown, from the innards of the gift. Studying Mina for a few pounding seconds, she finally returned to the page, sweeping her fingers over it and softly moving it over, grabbing a few more pages with it. Her eyes flickered over the pictures briefly, selecting nothing and discarding everything, until she discovered, relatively soon, a rendition of a female doctor with straight hair hanging to her shoulders talking to a small child of unknown gender. A smooth ebony pencil was taken out to join the browns and she wielded it tenderly in her hands, under Mina's elfin eyes, and pushed the tip at the drawn woman's far armpit, sketching wispy, but firm, lines that straightened her bust into a blurry flatness.   
  
"Wha'cha doing?" Mina asked innocently, unthinkingly, realizing she should expect no answer but still harboring a small disappointment when she received none. Lines continued whispering, lengthening the shoulders and widening the breadth of the hands with bolder darkness.  
  
The black pencil was placed into the box and she carefully chose the dark brown from the three cylinders left. She touched it at the ends of the adjusted being's hair, curving the strands and adding careful wisps higher along it, then loosely drawing tightly plotted curves down the length of the back, picking in her other hand another of the artistic tools. Following her other hand, she filled in the thin, empty space with the two shades, layering one over the other, and she abandoned the first for the final pencil, quickly refining the color of the hair extension, changing and finishing with obvious care.  
  
"Geez," Mina muttered, watching over her shoulder as she tucked away the trio, plucking out a dark purple one. The woman had been lined to be more masculine, flatter and broad-shouldered, and a braid had been improvised. "He really is something special, isn't he?" she murmured to herself, smiling lopsidedly whilst Aimee began coloring the dotted eyes.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
He knew it was foolish and, in a sense, somewhat vain, but the fact remained that Duo had curved his body on the couch, hips and legs flat against the cushions with his upper body twisted into a position reminiscent of sitting up, with a bound book of ancient Greek myths clutched in his hands. They were fairy tales of a sort, ones filled with complexities and shameful things no self-respecting fairy godmother would ever condone. He had read the tale of Hades and Persephone habitually, tapping his thumb impatiently on the sides of the pages as he struggled to immerse his mind in the dead mythology. Inanely, he considered the oddity of the standard choice of a wife for the God of Death in the old religions, staring blindly at the image of a maiden dressed in a ruffled robe and flowers cascading about her form, wondering pointlessly why most cultures had him wed to a goddess of life. "Celtic beliefs," he heard himself speak in a sighing voice, "held Beli, the death deity, was the husband of Danu, the mother goddess of life, blah-blah, blah-blah." Flipping the page, he tried to force his consciousness to comply with his efforts to separate work from home, only to read the same line in Cupid and Psyche's romance several times. With a noisy curse, he slammed the book shut and tossed it to the floor, twisting his waist so his entire body was facing the ceiling.   
  
"Why are you in my head?" he asked Aimee who was not there, Dorothy who did not exist, loved ones he had lost from his own foolishness and poor luck. Years of darkness had broken free, pounding undesirably in his skull, and he fought the memories for a moment, shoved at them and scrabbled to hide them in the corner, in the desert with the cages and the monsters of his own evils. And still the scent of blood rushed into his nostrils, thick and nauseating, reminding him a thousand-fold of the sheer apathy felt when in the heady clinch of battle, neither wishing to spread the heated liquid nor feeling any sense of responsibility to avoid bloodshed. It did not matter when no one was left to care, and then when he did have people to care for, he fought to protect them from the folds of death forever following him.   
  
Selfish reasons tinted so many of his actions, be it mildly or wholly, and though he knew it was basic human nature to do so, it was a blow to his sense of humanity to understand the depths of his own self-motivation. It was fear and need and such primal behaviors that drove the fighting, the protecting, and even his career choice had been a way to help cope with the darkness. Freud's pessimism was alarmingly brilliant as he thought, and he wondered that perhaps nothing was truly ever done without one's self in prominence, all emotions tainted with negativity.   
  
"I don't want to accept that," he said to the quiet, anger exploding in his chest, and he pressed his fist, hard, into the soft give of the couch. His fingers vanished into the depths, wrist still exposed with its jutting curves and flowing arm, and he found he needed to sigh, to breathe out, closing dark eyelashes to the contours of his cheeks. "I don't want to accept that!" he found he was nearly screaming, face suddenly streaked with shuddering wetness beneath his eyelashes, touching his skin in drying streams. The silent moans hit his shoulders then, convulsing muscles into tense agony, releasing in a second's worth of relief before tightening once more, and he reopened the minor cut in his tongue by biting down. "I'm not entirely selfish," his voice whispered, rasped, and he opened his eyes, imagining Sister Helen as he often did, sitting primly in the armchair facing the couch.  
  
Folds of guarding black, a habit of purest white under her head wrapping, quiet eyes watching with love, and it helped him to pretend she was in the room with him, pretending she could hear his words. "I'm afraid I'm failing as a person, sometimes," Duo spoke in bare tones to the motionless air. "And am I crazy, to pretend you're here with me, listening? Because I need someone to listen to me so badly right now, and I can't bug the guys…not for a while, at least. I don't even know what I want to say.  
  
"I've," and he hesitated, curling his fingers over his lips and frowning in a minuscule twitch of the corner of his mouth, closing his eyes to the woman he wanted once to be his mother. "I can't tell if I'm even thinking of her," her, dark blue hair, eyes that feared and watched with reluctant curiosity, small and waif-like and brilliant, "as an individual. Maybe I'm just turning her into a representation of everything I want to get rid of: evil things and people being turned into victims. But she isn't helping! And I know it's only been three days, but she…it seems like longer." An old soul, he thought, and he was not overwhelmingly surprised to learn his mind had exchanged Sister Helen for Aimee of the heady silences.  
  
Knees tucked into breasts, fingers locked delicately around shins hidden by the stiff cotton of a hospital gown, her eyes did not meet his in his mind like Sister Helen's did, buried in the shifting colors of her outfit. How could he have locked her up in the back of his memories, amongst the demons he alone was meant to carry as a burden, on that Monday, leaving her? Dorothy was set free, as he could never help one who had died, abandoned the binds of flesh and mortality, and he felt the briefest twinge of regret for the loss of a strong foe, a formidable companion, but it passed as the darkness faded, receding against its will into the waiting twine of sanity.  
  
"I want to know who you are," he said to the shimmering vision of Aimee, his voice a husky burden of tears and informality and a kindred, though different, spirit. He knew, as any might be able to see, they were vastly different, with her quiet solitude and his sheer gregarious spirit, but he could sense the pain that had drawn people together in the past, the pain so many felt but so few shared. "Do you have a favorite color? Why do you fear? What drives you, what makes you? Do you like classical music or Led Zeppelin? Your answers to the age-old questions: soda or pop? Chocolate or vanilla? Books or movies? Comedy or drama? Do you like Dante or Yeats or Stephen King; coffee, tea, or hot cocoa? Neither, either, or, whichever one you choose." He breathed, filled his lungs with air that pulsed and shifted, wanting so desperately to connect with this patient not with him, this the patient he knew he needed more than anything to save. It mattered little at that moment if she was the crux of some shadowy plan hatched by criminals or Preventers or alien, for all he damn well knew, and it echoed dully in his bones, he must save her.   
  
"We're hardly alike at all," he continued, speaking rapidly to the motionless image of Aimee, her face still turned into her legs, "and if we met in a different way, I'd bet you wouldn't look at me twice. And God knows you need salvation other than me, 'cause I might not be the best help for you, especially with the stuff happening, but we're just the smallest bit similar. Like someone cut a piece of the cloth I'm sewed from and stitched it into you, plaid on blue, or whatever."  
  
She did not speak, and that was expected, for she did not exist in the room of his apartment, hunched in perfect solitude amidst the puffing swells of the armchair. "I want to help you," he whispered, balling his hands at his stomach and leaning over them, holding his heart in as it sought to break in empathic sorrow. "I know, just a little, what you feel. You're hurting so bad inside you only see double-images, thinking everyone has a second motive hidden behind every smile or frown or tear. And I wonder," as she was cleansed from his mind, swept from his imagination and the room, "if you realize you have no secret motive yourself."  
  
Her purity shone in his mind like a broken beacon, shattered by mirrors hurled in accusatory arcs through the lighthouse she must be, and he could tell, empathetically, against every rule of psychology demanding careful thought and precision, it was true. She felt no evil, not now, in her soul, as she tried, confusedly, to tear herself from the blinding fog of the darkest seas.  
  
"When the hell did I become a poet?" he demanded of himself.  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
The first time she ever entered the Preventers headquarters, unable to still the excited thumping of her heartbeat in her ears the shade of soft pink cockleshells, her sneaker caught on the doorjamb, the lifted metal stabbing into the arch of the rubber bottom and firmly holding onto the swirled surface. A surprised squeak tore embarrassingly from her lips and she wobbled her arms futilely to still the inevitable plummet to the slick finish of the floor, already preparing a pained groan for the expectedly injuring fall, and instead of smashing horrifyingly into the fine dusting of dirt, she somehow landed squarely in Heero's arms.  
  
Not that she was complaining or the like, as he had rather incredible arms to fall into, all strong muscles and supple skin under that classy uniform shirt of his. But considering she was still technically a married woman and he was her closest friend, and it was incredibly disturbing to even think of him - due to both reasons - as a romantic interest, she wondered it might have been more tolerable if her nose had been broken by the tiles in place of being saved by the pleasant crook of his elbow. Why did he have to go and save her dignity anyway? After all, she was wearing sweatpants and ancient, semi-Paleolithic sneakers on her unclothed feet, and she had finally managed to go and trip in a federal building whilst crossing its hearth on her first visit. "Who do you think y'are?" she grumbled sweetly, prying her foot from the doorjamb and hopping a few steps as he released her shoulders.   
  
She followed him, as she was quickly becoming accustomed to, reasoning he was probably a little more used to the relatively bland hallways than she, seeing as he happened to be an employee of the organization. He turned sharply, down a short hallway, and then to a door on his left, and she trailed after him, twisting her heel in her sneaker absently to scratch a minor itch. Palming the pad beside the door, it swooshed into the wall and she swallowed a startled yelp, resulting in an odd, strangled noise filtering forth from her throat, and to his credit, he only looked back to check she was still breathing. Had it been any one of her other friends, wisecracks, insults, and obscene hand gestures would probably have been presented to her absolute lack of any tech-savvy fragments in her brain. And, though she blushed in mortification, she followed him through, praying the door would not close and spear her leg. As if she was supposed to know anything about automatic doors, she certainly hoped it was like an elevator, more or less.  
  
Nancy stared, gawking at the blinding rows of white cubicles, countless squares chalked together on either side of a wide aisle stretching from the door, down the entrance-way, and thickening fractionally once the entrance gave way to the massive work area. The loud, steady hum of a thousand some computers running, accented punctually by a rhythmic typing reminiscent of bees throbbing and droning, and she suddenly felt rather self-conscious of her AC 198 Holman-T4O hard drive, the slow modem, and a particularly aged keyboard from somewhere around the dawn of time, or her father's high school prom, whichever happened to have come first. Earnestly aware of her casual early morning wear, she shuffled in her shoes, rubbing anxiously at her arms and wishing her friend had given her time to put something more suitable on before literally dragging her out of her cozy home.  
  
"Yuy!" a woman's voice, strong and crisp, carried over the soft sounds of talking intermingled with the computer work. "You aren't supposed to be here until Monday. Where's Relena?" A tall woman, elegantly trim and rounded perfectly, strolled quickly down the darkly carpeted aisle, her blue Preventers jacket open and flapping idly at her hips. Her hair was a slick ivory violet, bangs haphazardly combed to one side so they fell lopsidedly over her matching blue-violet eyes, a few strands wafted over the left as the majority obscured the Mediterranean tip of her right eye, and Nancy felt a small doom in her chest at the beauty and friendly recognition on the woman's face.  
  
Not that she liked Heero that way, or anything, incredible arms, gorgeous eyes, and standoffish, yet cuddly, personality aside. Because none of it mattered in any case, and she was not attracted to him, nor had she been for the three years of their friendship, and she was not going to listen to her damn subconscious anymore, because that too did not matter. In the least. She shifted uncomfortably again, tucking one sneaker around the heel of its partner, ducking her head to avoid the woman's scrutiny and sensing his gaze on her, penetrating, solid, and warm.  
  
"And who is this?" the woman asked, interest in her smooth voice, eyes flickering over her formless body, hidden under the folds of her sweat-suit. "I'm Lucrezia Noin, by the way," she added after a few seconds of thought, holding her long hand out in a kind gesture. Still feeling somewhat inadequate, Nancy took her hand with her freckled one and shook firmly, her grip a bit weak in comparison with the taller woman's military grasp. "I'm going to assume you're Ms. Trishmore, the woman Yuy's always consulting in e-mails and whatnot. He has told you you're officially filed as a consultant to the Preventers…?"  
  
Memories of old cop shows watched with her father as a child filtered into her mind, the prominent one being that of the classic 'Monk' series, and she turned an amiable glare to Heero, who steadfastly refused to react in any form or manner. "Nope, can't say he has, Miz Noin," she informed her brightly, flashing her sweetest smile, and the woman laughed quietly. "And how do you know m'name anyway? Y'know, other than that little job I don't seem to be getting paid for…" A slightly more resentful glare was sent in his direction and he replied with a minute frown, resisting the temptation - weak though it was - to smile unashamedly.   
  
"Oh, we have a policy of monitoring our employees' e-mails when they do so on campus, so to speak," Noin said off-handedly, accepting a manila envelope from a harried worker emerging from the door at their back. "And, yes, it is completely legal."  
  
Nancy blanched visibly and even Heero looked mildly unsettled, an uneasy expression touching his usually stoic features. "Um, about the, uh, rough drafts I send for my romances," she began nervously, all but wringing her hands pitifully, "you don't--"  
  
"No, I have no worries you've been having an illicit affair vicariously through your characters," she was answered breezily, and she giggled in spite of herself as Heero snorted rudely, "as you are involved in a divorce at the moment, and that always seems to ruin relationships of the loving sort. Besides, I can't imagine how any woman could survive with a man like Yuy." She winked kindly at him to convince him her words were in jest, and he glowered his infamous scowl at her.  
  
"I can just imagine," Nancy sighed romantically, ignoring for the time being her outfit as she clasped her hands under her chin dreamily, purposefully fading her grey-threaded eyes into a drooping fog consumed by sappy emotion. "Long days spent convincin' him I don't need a firearm…evenings cozily eaten by thorough searches of ev'ry newspaper article for anythin' threatening…being woken up at four in the mornin' not for love nor for passion, but because he needs to pick my brain for ideas…" She paused, then, focusing her eyes thoughtfully on him as he tampered the urge to squirm unhappily, unfolded her hands so she could tap a finger in mock realization against the dimpled peach of her chin. "Oh, wait! That already happens! My God, all we need is an officiating priest, two witnesses, and rings, and I can deal with it every day!"  
  
"She sounds defensive," the office worker noted, having stayed beside Noin, watching with undivided interest as they bantered, and Heero switched his deadly glare from Nancy, who had developed an immunity to it over the first two months of their acquaintance, to the nosy worker. "I'd look out for her, Ms. Lucrezia," he continued, grinning at the redhead as she laughed silently at Heero's displeased air, "her sweatshirt said 'voting is against my religion; try again later.'"  
  
Noin considered this. "Wonder if Yuy's brought another Commie into our midst," she pitched loudly, waiting expectantly for a muffled shout from the back.  
  
"Hey! I resent that!" a man called in the back, and the office worker saluted the trio cheerfully, his bad mood evaporating as he shoved his delivery cart along the aisle, turning at a corner.  
  
"We need to speak to Une," Heero spoke abruptly, coldly, his voice forcefully detached. "Now. Not later, now. If she's in a meeting, we're interrupting, and we need to speak to her. It's about the Cortez case."  
  
Nancy wondered at how fast the woman paled, and the writer grabbed his arm before he could take off without her, pressing her fingers into the soft white of his shirt and over the obscured darkness of his lower arm. Lean muscles, indeed.  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
Author's Notes: Frag it all, Duo and Ami were hardly in this chapter at all. They won't be in the next chapter at all, as it's a flashback involving Quatre and Rei (because I need some angst/fluff detour, people, since the romance drive is moving very slowly), but to compensate, I plan for chapters ten and eleven to be completely Duo and/or Ami centralized, with plot development gazoodle with the other characters. Because, somehow, I've obtained both a plot and several characters already.   
  
I sincerely hope someone's caught the musical theme running through 'Requiem' by now, and because 'soubrette' is obviously a not-well-known term...a soubrette is a soprano (female) role, a leading role I believe, in comedic plays. And while this story is by no means a comedy, this is one of the lightest chapters thus far, and I figure it's comedy like Dante would have it: bitter and crushing, but easier to swallow at the end. The chapter, not the story (though I'm willing to bet that, too, will happen).  
  
Do not worry! This story is still a Duo/Ami and it will /stay/ a Duo/Ami; at this moment, I'm trying to flesh out the supporting characters while develop the plot's beginning somewhat. And I'm serious about ten and eleven being oriented on them, because they need it, I need it, and some of the scenes have been threatening to explode in my skull for the past two weeks...for two of the scenes, I've had 'em since I started the story. But, while I'm talking about couples, is anyone else liking Quatre/Rei? (I know Girl-chama does...I think.) I printed out 'Prelude' through 'Overture' for my best friend, Becky, and mailed 'em to her, and other than her desperate demands for me to write the rest of the frickin' story, and whether or not Duo was still going to end up with Ami, she complimented the 4xMars coupling. I believe her words were "great chemistry." Personally, I'm inclined to agree. It really would work pretty well and I can't for the life of me figure out why I've never done that coupling before...  
  
Chapter dedicated to Kaiya-chan, who probably doesn't believe me when I swear I'm not on fancy Mexican drugs, 'cause she's beta-read all of these chapters and dealt with my inane blabbering. And she's given me the name of a Zoicite/Ami writer, and for that I am eternally grateful! I did the changes, ma'am, even though I didn't want to do one. (I'm semi-colon happy, sorry to say...;;;! *snickers and falls off computer chair*)  
  
And, yes, 'Monk' will be a classic cop show. It's my fave TV show and has been since it debuted. I can't wait for the second season! *weeps*  
  
Yeah, that stupid standard disclaimer still applies, and, yeah, I still don't like it. I'm distributing to www.FanFiction.net, 'Danzibo's Loop-o-Stuff,' and currently entangled in a minor spam war with 'Charon X-Treme.'   
  
I demand feedback! GIVE TO MEEEE! ...Please? Click that review thing-y, and, while you're at it, put me on your favorites' list (*laughs and waves dismissively* naw, not really), or e-mail me at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com. And then I'll love you forever...*insert creepy music, only to be interrupted by 'Futurama' coming on* Bender!  
  
Reviewers! To them doth I say: thank-you! Individual thanks next chapter, I promise...  
  
(I hope to God I manage to shake the mild author's block that's threatening to descend. I have a Trigun fic in a different account, a One Piece-x-Sailor Moon [Roronoa Zoro-x-Ami, baby!] rough draft I need a beta-reader for, and this to work on, and I need to sit down and write on each of them. Here's to hoping the weekend comes soon...)  
  
A fond farewell to 'Young Justice,' the comic that brought me back into the DCU fandom. I've been with it since issue twenty-four and, thirty issues later, still feel it wasn't long enough time. To the characters that made it rich, from Secret - whose one great wish finally came true, to Slobo - who deserved his budding relationship with Anita (and then, of course, he died), to Wondergirl and Superboy - who /finally/ got it on, geez loo-eeze. I love them all. :] 


	10. Requiem: Memoriam Deux

He struck her as moonlight, a gentle glimpse of the pale light hovering in the shadows of dusk, and she blinked at him, staring against her will across the hundreds of bobbing heads confined to the vast, delicately furnished ballroom. The voice of her father snapped through the unwanted trance she had drifted into, wondering who this man was that he could have her forget, even for the briefest of moments, her revulsion for the opposite gender and its hidden motives. She turned her head respectfully, playing the role of obedient, demure daughter perfectly to another of his many bachelor friends, men with prominent stature in the higher society and all wealthy. Her hand was caught in the large one of the man some ten years her elder, his hands enclosed in flaunting ivory gloves composed of satin, and she forced a smile to her lips, well instructed in the art of false appreciation. The silver man spun of golden-threaded moonbeams was gone when she finally escaped, under the pretense of tracking down one of the many servants for glittering glasses of wine, peering amongst the conforming suits and slinky evening gowns.  
  
Pretending she did not feel the sting of inexplicable disappointment in her breast, she touched the tuxedo sleeve of one of the servers, inclining her head politely and taking two swan-necked glasses from the tray. She made her way through the pulsing crowd, shifting her hips once as a slightly drunk executive stumbled dangerously close to her waist, and called forth that horribly brilliant smile, false and leaving her eyes dryly lonely, handing one glass of wine to her father, who took it as granted and never looked at her, and the other to his companion, who also took it for granted but used it as a greeting for him to smile lasciviously at her. Hatred choked in her throat and she nearly gave in to the urge to slap both men, dashing the glass to the ground and speaking her mind without hesitation. She loathed the dress her father had chosen for her, undoubtedly in hopes she would attract a suitor he approved of, one inevitably older than she by at least seven years, and the silky red fabric clung stubbornly to her every curve, too tightly for her to wear even a strapless brassiere. Under the foul man's gaze, she felt mortifyingly naked, exposed uncomfortably to all who wished to see.  
  
"Ah, here he is," she heard her father rumble in an oily voice, his dark eyes glimmering with unabated slyness at a figure walking quickly to their unpleasant trio. This, then, must be the owner of the construction company her father was currently in negotiations with for the building of a new corporate skyscraper, and she pitied the poor man for having to deal with the cheating ways of her sire. "Be polite, dearest." And she wanted to scream at him, wanted to be herself, be argumentative and sarcastic, but she smiled docilely in reply, dipping her head sweetly.  
  
"Hello," a soft voice spoke, and she lifted her head, feeling raven waves twisting over her shoulder, and she saw, with a soundless inhalation of air suddenly too thin to properly aid her nerves, the silver being lost earlier to the crowd. He shook her father's hand, then the other man's, speaking his name to the latter and accepting his name in return, but she could not hear what he said his name was. The thick cloud of regret that he would ignore her presence was surprising and she tried to ignore the heat burning in her cheeks.  
  
And then he smiled at her, grasping her hand in his, a hand slender and small, but still larger than her own hand. "I am Quatre Raberba Winner," he informed her in a gentle tone, his beautiful green eyes fixing to her dark violet, and that heat suffused her entire face, thrumming in her veins and jumping her heartbeat in her throat.  
  
"I am Rachelle Hino," she replied, grateful for her strong voice, and finding her lips were curving up truthfully, brightly. She tucked her hand down into its opposite, watching through the fringe of her eyelashes as he began speaking, ever respectful, with her father, and she could not suppress the smile threatening to conquer her face when he sneaked glances at her, always beaming at her like a lovely boy just leaving his childhood. For the moment, she did not mind the sleek sheath of her dress nor the excited flutter in her stomach.  
  
--  
Requiem: Memoriam Deux  
--  
  
She was exacting her righteous fury out on the innocent tomato - or, at least, he assumed it had at one point been a tomato, but as it was for the most part an indescribable mess of juice and sliced innards, he could not be entirely certain. The depth of her anger, whether self-directed or meant for him, was merely accentuated by the sharpened knife she used to deal unfair retribution, and he paused in the doorway of the cabin's kitchen, seeing her haloed by the reflective light of the snow drifts piled angelically outside the sliding windows on the opposing side of her profile. He rather hoped she was not mad at him, as they had only been married for all of four days, and he came close to retreating in fearful shame, worrying he had somehow failed in an aspect of being her husband, shallowly touching on a subject best suited for Duo's far dirtier mind. Fervently, he wanted her to be happy, and he could feel his chest unravel slightly, seeing the slender opalescent beauty, cords of ebony hair twisted into a sophisticated bun with trails of unwound hair slipping around her neck. A soft cry interrupted his thoughts and he narrowed blonde eyebrows, seeing her drop the knife to the cutting board and bring her index finger to her mouth, lips pursing at the skin.   
  
"Rachelle," he offered, voice melting into deep, unnecessary concern, and he pushed off the door frame into the kitchen, crossing the polished wood floor in his dark pajama bottoms and contradicting yellow polo. Her beautiful eyes, seeming as if chipped from black diamonds tainted by fire, flickered to him, glistening portals to her soul, traced through by mild pain but reassuring in their affection. Taking a seat on one of the bar stools before the cooking island situated in the center of the snow-lit room, he grasped her wrist in a firmly tender grip and studied the cut with amusing seriousness, tilting his upper body over the bar. "Oh," he sighed in dismay, and she smiled a tiny softness at his down-turned head, "you're bleeding."  
  
Prying fingers from her other hand, palest white in the winter chill, touched his chin and she lifted his face from her mildly wounded digit, granting him the look of her trying to swallow a smile, her lower lip pinched so it was tucked beneath her upper lip to hide the quiver of her mouth. He found it remarkably endearing, one of the unexpectedly cute things on her usually haughty face. "I'm bleeding," she agreed, leaning forward to knock her nose on the smooth skin of his forehead, "but you've got tomato on the front of your shirt."  
  
Quatre glanced reflexively down and made a face, seeing he had, in his fit of comic worry, pushed his lower ribcage directly into the remains of the graphically butchered tomato. Quickly pressing his lips to the thin cut on her finger, he stood and held his shirt from his torso by pulling at the hem, walking to the rolls of paper towels held thankfully on the near wall by a hefty wooden dowel. He ripped several large squares of the quilted paper and rubbed furiously at the stain, and she laughed, very quietly, at his back, her hand pressing to her mouth in a suppressing motion, her eyes lit. He could sense the change in his chest once more, the warmth and the desire to keep that happiness alive in her, and he dabbed again at the unwelcome redness, content he had collected all the bits and most of the moistness. Dropping the wadded paper into the small trash bin hooked under the dowel, he slid across the floor and took his seat again, folding his arms on the counter, but checking to see he had not placed them in the tomato she was scooping away with a cupped hand and a drooping washcloth.   
  
"You're such an idiot," she said lightly, teasingly, and he wrinkled his nose at her, frowning playfully. Rachelle laughed and spun on her heel, the trails of dark silk swirling in a mist of black, placing the washcloth in the silver sink and snapping her wrist over the warm water knob. A fountain of cool water tumbled forth, pouring coldly for the span of a half-minute before slowly beginning to steam, shifting into heat, and she shook the cloth out under its steady wetness, wringing it as she flipped the knob back into place. She draped the cloth over the partition between the halves of the sink, smoothing a stubborn wrinkle over with her palm, and turned back to the countertop, another tease dying in her throat as she met his unusually strong gaze, one nearly melted in with aggression in place of the standard gentility he sported.  
  
"Come here," he asked without questioning, his voice maintaining the soft meekness it seemed to be made of, though an undercurrent of some powerful metal stood behind it. Raising an eyebrow and schooling her features into the pursed lips and raised chin used as defense, she strolled over the floor, feet padding silently on the boards in the black slippers adopted in the morning, leaning over with her eyebrow still raised. His hand grazed her cheek, raising and barely touching skin to skin, and she started, narrowing her eyes in speculation, as he brushed his mouth to hers, his lips passing sweetly over her yet pursed ones.  
  
"I love you," he whispered, his lips moving against hers, and he was left confused, unsure as to what he had done, what boundary he had violated, when she yanked away. Her good mood wiped away as a tide at dawn, her back suddenly facing him. His fingers curled where his hand was held, frozen, in the air, and he blew air out in a low stream, fingertips squeezing to the swell of his palm, eyes watching the shuddering play of muscles along her shoulders, the upper bit of her back exposed by the low hanging long-sleeved shirt she wore. Her hands fussed in the sink, working the washcloth free of every drop of the sticky tomato sauce improvised on the island, and the streams of dark thread flowing from her bun were stark on her white skin, intimidation written without motion for her movements were simple and curt.  
  
He moved from the stool, bare feet flinching fractionally at the mild cold hibernating in the boards, and crept to her side, playing with the strands abandoning her twist though she jerked her shoulder dismissively. "What's wrong, Rachelle?" and she switched her gaze sharply, practically throwing the dampened washcloth into the sink for an unsatisfactory wet slap, her eyes piercing him like molten daggers.   
  
"You can't say things like that!" she screamed, her hand clenching into a taut fist, hovering at her shoulder, her arm bent upwards, and she clutched at the sink like she would a lifeline, begging support from it as she forced herself to meet his face, his features already contorting with emotional pain. "You can't, oh, God, you can't say you love me," the words were expelled with effort, and she cursed the cabin, the isolation, for her loss of control, her loss of elegance, and could find no way to explain why he was never to say he loved her, not during the moaning of night, not amidst the banter of day. She could feel, in her heart, the distrust for all men she had fostered for years, from the day her father took her from her grandfather's care, and it burned to see the ache in the leaf green eyes watching her sadly.  
  
"Then," he said slowly after a moment, leaving her hair and smoothing his palm flatly on the dip betwixt her shoulder blades, "I hate you." And she could not hold back the stunned look, overwhelmed by the flashing agony spearing her entire existence caused by his words, her lips parting and eyes growing wide, frightened, in surprising innocent betrayal. He smiled softly, pressing his mouth on her jaw, and said evenly, in the voice used for tenser meetings at his office, "Is that what you want me to say?"  
  
She breathed shakily, answering, "No," and he laughed, a breathless sound that untied the hateful knot in her belly, hooking his other arm around her front and moving her about to face him, hugging her gently.   
  
"I'll wait," he promised devoutly, "for as long as it takes for you to believe me. And if you don't want me to say it until then, I won't."  
  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
  
The slick cold of snow, wet and pressing, slipped down his back and he stiffened, rolling his shoulders back uncomfortably to shift it off his skin, shooting an unappreciative glare at his cherubically smiling wife. He was thankful, deeply, that he was alone with his wife on the mountain usually dotted with skiers, in an isolated pocket of the woods; he could count on one hand the times he had seen her act in such a sneakily charming manner. It was as if she was striving to make up for the childhood she had lost, and those few times, they had been left to their own devices, from a stranded sailboat to a quiet date thrown by Relena. Although, technically, the first had engraved into his mind as a remarkably unpleasant bout of seasickness and the latter resulted in his then-fiancee discovering she had a weak alcohol tolerance.   
  
"It wasn't me," she said divinely, the glorious image of a fiery angel as she touched a sleekly gloved finger to her lower lip in an elaborate show of innocence. "I've heard these tales of mountain specters--" and she deliberately closed her sparking eyes, giving him a blind shoulder as he unzipped his coat and shook the tendrils of stubborn snow free, "and abominable snowmen, as any well-read person should--" he slipped the woven plastic of his coat over his arms, leaving it open, and began marching toward her, feet sliding through snow drifts, "so it absolutely could not have been me, for I am far too much of a lady to do so, and what the hell are you doing, Quatre?"  
  
This tumbled from her lips the moment preceding his motion of grabbing her about the waist and, twisting in a looping circle as she shrieked and swore at him in angry surprise, tossed her into the snow. He overbalanced a second or two later and collapsed beside her, flurries of whiteness molded into clumps limply rising and cresting to the snowy mounds once more. A stiff chuckle resounded in her throat and she slipped into a leaning position, bracing her weight on her elbows and looking at him with a splendid merriment creasing her features into upward loops. She laughed, softly at first, almost derisively, then louder and freer, specks of ivory dotting her violet-streaked darkness, and moved off of one arm to grab his. Rolling him into a sitting stance, she continued laughing, patting his wet cheek and tapping his effervescent grin with her thumb.  
  
"You're so silly," she finally spoke, tilting her mouth in offering, a sacrifice he willingly accepted, kissing the pair of crimson lips chastely. Pushing her back, he leaned over, touching his mouth to one cheek, then the other, and she slapped him half-heartedly across the nose. "Pig," Rachelle said in a voice clearly contradicting her solitary word, pinching his cold-reddened nose delicately between her rounded knuckles. "I simply can't stand men, and it's because of examples like you." She crossed her arms over her chest, fitting the giving coat perfectly to indicate the chosen note of teasing disdain, her lips pursing in hauteur.   
  
"I don't believe I'm being given a fair trial," he found fit to inform her, purposefully lowering his long eyelashes, a shade more brown than the rest of his hair, into a lulling angelic appearance. "The judge is biased and I think she's using her beauty unfairly to sway the jury." He smiled and, reaching with gloved fingers, twisted a small bunch of hair into a swirling braid.   
  
"Well, the defendant," she retorted in her snobbiest voice, lifting her nose as best she could whilst on her back and giving her lips a serious expression, "is behaving in a most unbecoming manner. I suspect he's bribing the judge - possibly even sleeping with her!" A tiny smirk twitched her face slightly, a private laughter thick with sly wit and personal knowledge.  
  
He frowned at her and flicked the makeshift braid with his index finger, scowling, "The prosecutor, too! How terrifically shameful!" Finding the small stretch of pale skin flashed by her collared coat suitably intriguing, he scooped, still pinning her to the ground with his arms and upper body, a significant amount of the cold winter downfall and promptly dumped it on her neck. She shrieked and bolted up, raven hair long since taken from its elegant bun and bouncing in flaming waves as she patted her neck, fingertips plucking clumsily through the leather gloves to rid herself of the chill discomfort.  
  
"Oh, you bastard!" she fumed, ripping the buttons tracing the length of her coat open, and she wriggled her fingers into the neck of her sweater, feeling the cold trickle of melted snow trailing a thin stream down her spine. Surrendering the battle, she ran a hand through her mussed hair to straighten it somewhat, and glanced to see Quatre studying her with an emotion akin to surprised hurt. Guilt wormed through her and her hands fell into her lap, unsure of what to say to take away that hateful betrayed look, and she cupped his chin in her hands.  
  
He smiled softly and planted his hands in the snow, leaning forward to kiss her forgivingly, and she, after escaping the initial confusion, laughed in muted tones. "I hate cursing, Rae," he told her and she smiled back, then rung her eyebrows together, tips looping up as she eyed him in a way almost wondering.  
  
"'Rae,'" she echoed, moving her hands up to push the lightest degree of pressure to his cheeks, rolling the word on her tongue before she joined her mouth to his. Quatre was lost for a moment or so, attempting to catch the train of thought he had managed to miss, and decided that, so long as she was not yelling angrily, it must have been a rather good thing, what he said. "I've never had a nickname before," she confessed when she pulled away, her words as close to shy as they could ever be, and he beamed at her.  
--~--  
*  
--~--  
Author's Notes: I'm not sure I have anything to say at this point...*fidgets* Does anyone out there like chocolate on tortillas? I do, but everyone else I know says it's weird to eat choco-tortil--*brained by Ryan*  
  
Quatre/Rei is apparently liked by many people. I /still/ don't know why I've never used it before...  
  
Huggles to Kaiya-chan for checking this baby over, and commenting there weren't as many errors as per norm. *sheepish look* 'Chapter Ten: Chord' is probably going to get rid of my improvement. 0o;  
  
According to the copyrighting laws, I don't own the characters I didn't create, and they belong to their respective owners instead of me. (Curses!) Distribution is to www.FanFiction.net, various places scattered throughout the solar system, and my own website, if I ever get around to buying my own damn domain and posting it on the Internet. I do, however, own the Sailor Mercury plushie I bought two years ago. My Roronoa Zoro plushie keeps her company, as I haven't been able to find a Duo plushie yet (double curses!).  
  
Feedback: still massively desired (with ENORMOUS thank-yous to the people who've been steadily reviewing, those who have e-mailed me, Kaiya-chan, and the readers who pop up with a comment whenever they get the chance). I am incredibly grateful for the response you all have shown me, and it means a lot to me. :] Thanks. [Comments can be left - because I'm obligated to write this contact-me-thing, sorry - via the review button supplied below, or at alien_wolf@sailorjupiter.com.]  
  
Manga Plug: Go read 'One Piece' in the Viz translation of 'Shonen Jump.' This is not a request, this is an order. Buy the Japanese volumes at www.sasugabooks.com, especially volume eleven (lurvely Zoro on the cover, Sanji smokin' and in a large armchair/throne, and all with Luffy/Nami hints galore inside!), and download illegal translations off the Internet. Visit eBay.com, collect Japanese DVD collections and fansubs. Bug Funimation at their website to get off their butt and translate the anime already, because they've /bought/ the rights! (For those of you holding out suspiciously, cease your hesitation: for fangirls, Zoro is drool-worthy; for fans of men who can't get any no matter how hard they try, check out Sanji; for feminists, there's always Nami. And Luffy in and of himself is worth reading it for.)  
  
Response to Feedback: *inhales deeply and chokes* I know I promised individual thank-yous this chapter, but I'm undergoing some trouble right now. I absolutely /swear/ I will next chapter! Just know that I seriously am honored by each and every comment I read, and it means a great deal that I'm getting such lovely support from you all (and I'm very thankful to those who catch my mistakes). It's wonderful knowing that people enjoy what I write. Thank-you all. :] 


	11. I Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Bro...

Note to Readers:  
  
I've been contacted by some people who were concerned about when I was going to be leaving over the summer and for how long. At the moment, my family is not entirely sure if we will be going at all, due to strain in the Middle East (the war with Iraq, etc.). The US Embassy in Cairo recently had rocks thrown through the windows by violent protestors, and we were lucky enough that none of the military personnel were off base at the time. If problems or complications arise, my family won't be going to visit my dad in Egypt (which I want to do, very badly). In the other case, if we do go to Egypt, we'll leave in the tail end of May, right after school ends here in Mississippi.  
  
Either way, I can't guarantee I'll be able to post chapters (though I'll certainly be writing them and sending 'em to Kaiya-chan, bless her heart). I do know the base in Egypt runs on Internet Explorer, but I don't know if I'll be allowed to use it (several bases have a policy restricting teenagers under the age of eighteen) or what. If we stay at home, I definitely won't be able to load chapters at my own house (I've explained this before, with AOL blocks and everything). I'll try to see if I can do so at the public library or at my aunt's house (she lives three minutes away).  
  
Whew!  
  
In any case, thanks again to everyone, and your concern is appreciated. :] I'm still working, so don't worry!  
  
Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease.  
"Whosawhatnow?"  
-My life, in one non-word. 


	12. Requiem: Chord I

A perfunctory glance at the timepiece strapped to her wrist via a pair of leather arms snuggly fitted to her skin startled her sufficiently. She bit her tongue when a mild curse threatened to gain dominance of her vocal cords, and she straightened her back, tugging the clinging sleeve of her yellow v-neck over the softly ticking watch. The front desk had been abandoned in the dimmed light of after hours, and she had been gone from her post for roughly an hour, trying to read some sort of emotion within the studious coloring Aimee was performing. Pointless, she thought to herself with a mental roll of her eyes and a sigh, and she leaned over to smile at the girl. "I have to go, Aimee," she informed her and the girl paused for half a beat, and then resumed her quick sketching.  
  
"Right, then," and she moved back awkwardly, slowly crossing the tiled floor to the door cracked open. "I'll try to come tomorrow, okay?" Mina waited for some form of reaction and, upon receiving none, shrugged, reaching with one slender hand for the door and squeaking her heel around in her clog as she fingered her bun in distant thought. Turning before she exited the room, she saw Aimee staring at her, a muscle in her jaw working as if she was mulling over a sentence she was considering. The feeling of surprise she felt quickly faded into eagerness, but the dark-haired waif snapped her head back to the coloring book open by her feet.  
  
"Okie," sighed Mina, and she closed the door at her back, leaving the light on in afterthought.  
  
--  
Requiem: Chord I  
--  
  
The applesauce clung to her tongue in grainy absolution, a sort of lumpiness struck over with a slick feel rather like something that could not decide whether it was a liquid or a solid. She stuck the spoon into the nondescript plastic tub once more, mechanically placing another lopsided dip of it into her mouth and using her upper lip to peel the remains away from the spoon's streaked curve. Cold metal grasped delicately in thin fingers had warmed in the presence of her body heat, no longer eerie or noticeable in its chill touch, and she continued eating the applesauce. An empty container at one point filled with a thick mixture of oatmeal and powdered medicine sat in the upper rightmost corner of the red tray placed on the flat metal block, its sole companion a half-filled carton of milk. Two green pills remained patiently waiting at the foot of the milk, and she ignored them, watching the opposite wall without seeing as she tasted the spicy blandness of the browned yellow sauce.   
  
Licking a sticky drop on her lip, she caught the movement of the younger nurse waiting anxiously for her to finish the morning meal, and she scraped the sharp edge of the spoon in a semicircle inside the tilted tub. She carefully took the last bit into her mouth and, not taking the time to savor the unusual taste, swallowed, scooping the pills into her palm and dropping them one by one into her mouth. A strong swig of the milk, which all but drained the small carton of its contents, helped her gulp the slender ovals down her throat, and she set both tub and carton on the tray quickly. Picking the tray up by its flat edges and holding it waveringly in her hands, she offered it to the nurse and avoided meeting her eyes.   
  
The weight of the tray was removed from her hands and she pushed her palms over her thighs, the rough fabric of the peach-shaded hospital gown rubbing enjoyably over the skin. Her left hand itched as did the sewn cuts under the bandages swathed about her legs, and she scratched with the first over the second, a minute frown tucking her lips down as she fought for relief. A soft sound escaped her lips, something like an aggravated 'ah' that did little to alleviate her situation, and she bent both her knees up, curving her spine forward to scratch with both hands. Dark hair tossed forward to obscure her face from observers as she struggled with the need to stop the itch lining her leg and palm, alternating picking at one and the other.   
  
She heard the door open and the heavier footsteps of a man walking in, his weight balanced carefully so as to be a bit quieter and inconspicuous. Her head turned to face Maxwell-god-of-death and she gave him a desperate look, her lower lip pulling away from her upper and into a gaping frown that exposed her teeth as she scratched harder. She could see a startled look cross his features and she knew that, deep down, she was meant to be afraid of him, but the itching hurt so badly, she just wanted it to stop. The surprise faded into laughing amusement, and he kicked the standard undersized chair into the room's white confines before watching her actions.  
  
"Itchy, huh?" he asked obviously, and she turned away, finally just slapping her thigh and immediately wishing she had not done so. The dagger of pain that lanced up her hip and into the rest of her body was unwanted, but the itching did stop, and she leaned further over her legs, rubbing one palm gently over the offended injury to still the pain. "Sorry," and he grimaced apologetically, clapping his hands together as if stalling time, dark violet eyes flickering from one corner to the other.   
  
He paused, looking down at the floppy books and box she had left arranged neatly on the hard surface that doubled as medical table and a rather uncomfortable mattress, and looked back at her with a degree of curiosity sounding in his face. "What's this?" he questioned, fingers touching the glossy cover of the top book, and she pushed gently, but firmly, at his shoulder. He pulled away, startled, and she placed both her hands, one sticky with gauze and the other pale as snow, on the books in a clearly defensive manner, shaking her head slowly from side to side.   
  
"Okay," a smile slowly curled his lips, and he hooked his foot around one of the chair's legs, dragging it over the floor with a protesting yelp to deposit it near the heavy metal rectangle. He tossed his length onto its stiff corners, crossing arms across his torso and tracing fingertips along his lowest ribs, and rolled his eyes heavenward as he thought over what to say. She kicked her legs over the edge of the metal and hooked her fingers together into a laced bump that came to rest between her legs as she stared at him with little emotion piercing her features or eyes. "So…how's your sleep been?" he continued with a helpless shrug, knowing he was being somewhat foolish.  
  
She wanted to answer, truly she did, but she could feel in a flash everything that had been taught to her and she reacted as she only knew how to, pulling her legs up once more to her chest and hugging knees to her chest. Tucking chin into the shallow curve of the thin dress collapsing between her knees, she kept her eyes on him, tracing them to his ear and keeping their midnight depths watching the curved skin. A disappointed look swept over his heart-shaped features, and she turned her face down into the cloth, pinning her cheeks with her knees as she exhaled softly. A sudden weariness befell her and she scratched dull fingertips absently over the bandages obscured by the hanging hospital gown, breathing a shaky intake of air and wondering why she felt so odd this day.  
  
"One step forward, three miles back," she heard him mutter, sighing deeply with a comical heave of his shoulders. Glancing up, peeking over the edge of the peach fabric, she loosened her grip just so, hands still firmly encircling the upper angle of her shins as she peered foggily at him. Maxwell-god-of-death offered her a thin smile, a twitch of his lips that refused to melt into his black amethyst eyes, and the corners pinched into a dishonest glimpse of unhappy joy forced into expression. What could possibly, she wondered with a tug of sadness, change such an exuberant person? She knew it was not her place to ever question the motives of men, nor was she meant to ever guess why they behaved as they did, but from what little she had known him for, he was never sad.   
  
She pushed a worrying sound into the center of her throat, letting it color the air and startle him into a parted lip show of raised eyebrow surprise, and blinked herself in confusion. Something flashed in his feline eyes and she curled her toes over the edge of the table, shrinking back and curving her spine sharply to avoid his curious glances. The familiar squeeze of panic tugged nauseatingly in her stomach and she felt her breath hasten, an uncomfortable, quick sucking in of air and expelling it forcefully. He was coming, now, that was how it would work as it was supposed to, and she tried to pull herself into her soul, fling limbs and mind into the engulfing pools of her essence. If she could not see anyone, she reasoned childishly, wanting desperately the foolish logic of a child to claim her, they could not see her.   
  
She held her neck still, the muscles trailing under the soft skin frozen in quivering tension, and breathed quickly, shallowly, through the thin weave of her dress. The cloth was harsh against her face, a scraping reminder of the darkness and the pushing needles of reality, but when the memory of silk crossed her mind, the cool liquid smooth feel of satin fabrics, she relished the roughness. Fabric brushed her nose, pulled narrowly into her mouth and then shoved down when she gusted warmed air from her lungs and out her moistened mouth. For a moment, the world consisted of nothing but her ragged gulps, the quavering breaths thrust out, and the bland scent of the dress mingled in with the grainy taste of remnant applesauce fading gradually on her tongue.  
  
A large hand, lean and taut, touched her shoulder blade lightly, a hesitant caress of alien concern tossing the thread over her tender skin, causing the bandages beneath to scream in muted, briefly present agony that fell silent when the fingers crept to grasp her shoulder firmly. Mind filled with a bewildered lack of recognition, she slowly lifted her head, focusing her eyes on the corner before her and calming her chest for the span of a few trickling seconds. She craned her head around, neck twisting up slightly to tilt her face toward the owner of the hand, and she saw Maxwell-god-of-death leaning toward her, an expression of wrinkled misunderstanding creasing his nose. It was his hand on her and she yanked away, pulled her shoulder free as if he was trying to break her, tear into her, and she fell to the floor, somehow landing on her feet and wincing at the daggers screeching through her ankle.   
  
Distantly, she realized the tears lining her face were caused by the sunbursts of fear trailing about her mind and she bent over, nursing the ankle and quietly spitting out the applesauce returning to her mouth. She was thankful there was little coming up from her stomach, but she shook anyway, weeping when the painful itching speared her leg again. Wrong, wrong, wrong! She was not supposed to run, but she did, and she was crying because she did not want to imagine Maxwell-god-of-death bringing punishment, agony, ducking her face and trying to hide the tears, the consuming fear. With a soft noise, she curled her face closer to the floor, tilting her nose toward her awkwardly split knees and lips peeling from her lips as she spat out another small bit of stained breakfast.  
  
"Shit, Aimee," she heard a soft curse, kept as quiet as possibly in his rumbling voice of rasping husk, and the malleable cloth of his sweatshirt windbreaker was tossed over the unsightly pool. The same fingers that had touched her shoulder with concern she was not used to splayed over the cloth, pressing firmly down on the spill. She kept her eyes, unseeing orbs that saw through a broken haze that filmed over her body like a heavy blanket sewn of led, on his fingernails while he blew air out in a noisy sound of helpless exasperation. The muscles in his wrist were subdued, the cord connecting hand to arm standing out barely so, and she watched the callous flatness of bitten fingernails shaded a pale tinge of pink.   
  
A growing sense of reluctant peace touched her mind, but that was bad, he-that-watched-everything whispered in his cracking tone stealing her sanity and her bleeding soul from her weakening grips, and she cried silently. In that moment, she felt a deep spiral of hopeless sorrow kill the newly birthed peace and she was miserable, the memory of sharp glints and hard fists enveloping every hidden jewel of precious things so she was utterly alone. Nothing was right and nothing would save her, and she let her hands fall limply to the ground, knuckles bending carelessly on the tile as she allowed her chin leave to press sharply on her collar. I am nothing, she thought listlessly, and even the internal helplessness and the murderous anguish slipped into the abyss of blank apathy. I have nothing, she continued to herself, and she looked up at him somehow, dredging up the strength of will to do so. Why is he here, she wondered with a flare of emotion, a desire to keep this person so quickly becoming a support close to her, but knowing he would leave as everyone did.  
  
Why, she repeated to herself and she shuddered, slowly, painfully, dragging to her feet and turning very carefully about to stagger, nearly unbalanced, back to the gleaming table. Wrapping her arms over the surface, she pulled herself up onto it and slid over the cooled slick flatness, feeling the hem of her gown bunch and twist up her leg to coalesce around her lower thighs. She picked at the loose threads sticking haphazardly from the hem and pulled it back to the loose dangling close to the swell of her ankles it had previously been occupied with, and stared emptily at the wall. If she was docile and did nothing more to possibly anger him, perhaps she could keep what few things were left to her before she was taken from the sanctity and loneliness of the white room. She sighed quietly, a murmuring stream of air that faded into the air and ceased quickly to exist as she crossed her legs into a lotus position and touched her eyelashes to the pale curve of her cheeks.  
  
He studied her for a moment, crouched yet on the shining tiles with his hand pinning the finally staining fabric of his casual windbreaker to the simple affair dripped to the floor, and he brought one arm up, resting his elbow on the nook curved between knee and thigh. His index finger caught on his lower lip, teeth chewing stoically on the blunt end of his ragged fingernail and eyes fixed on her without actually seeing her shivering form. Duo could sense something odd changing in her, an unusually rapid acclimation most patients took months to gingerly step into, if not years, but he could see the hesitation, the sheer fear lining her. In a way, it was insulting and shaming, knowing she feared him with no encouragement of that irrational belief on his part, and he frowned around his finger, taking it from his mouth and letting his arm drape over his leg as he considered her. How exactly, he thought sarcastically to himself, am I supposed to analyze if I don't get anything from her?  
  
"Not true," he answered himself sheepishly in a low voice, threading his free hand into his chestnut hair, bangs thrown into disarray as the strands flowed between his fingers. "I do have that Book of Truths thing, and she did speak, even if it was Spanish," and he frowned humorously, sticking his tongue out at the air and the unwelcome smell gradually pervading the cloth's casual weave. It drove him nuts having a problem he was unable to solve, be it by gun, ill-timed joke, or other questionable means. Not for the first time he wondered why it was he had chosen the profession of psychology as a permanent career.   
"Especially when it's so damn frustrating," he grumped, drooping a little before flowing to his feet in smooth jaguar motions. Straightening his brown button-up shirt and threading his thumb into one of the loops of his slacks' belt path, he stuck his lower lip out a little, folding it temporarily over his upper lip as he blew a quick breath up into his uneven bangs and sending the tendrils fluttering for the briefest moment.   
  
The recollection of the night before crept onto the edge of his sense, sweeping into quick existence before he managed to quash it, throw it to the demons kept pinned and hovering in the darkest corners of his nature. What did she mean to him? Three days alone, this one notwithstanding, had he known her, shadowed visits meant to bring her back into the normalcy others so easily gained and kept near to their personalities. It was this kind of bland normalcy that was so desired by many and meant so little in the long run. For the first time since he had taken the unusual assignment, he felt insecure, seeing too much of his own priorities, his own selfish wants for peace and sanity, the ability to interact with other humans and not feel he was forever lurking on the edge of darkness, in his actions. How could he ever think to help her when he refused to even see her for who she was?   
  
Breathing out heavily, lip peeking at one corner as he closed his eyes shut tightly, he wove fingers through his hair, twisting the bangs into a careless fan of the chestnut darkness as he rubbed fingertips over his scalp. Question of the day, he chirruped brightly in his head in a tone that mocked his own confusion, and he swept his hands from his hair, pinning them over his face while he tilted his chin toward the lights above, braid swinging from his back in a slipping arc. He drummed, for the passage of a moment, his fingers along his temples, a pointed expression of his unfortunately constantly present impatience, and he plucked his hands from the contours of his face with a sigh. "This," he grumbled, "is getting me one place and one place only, and nowhere is a very boring place indeed."  
  
Duo turned, twisting on his heel and rechecking the knot at the end of his braid with a sort of thoughtless habitual motion, and crossed his arms over his chest in the loose ravel of cloth and folding arms that never managed to convey the precise emotion he was reaching for. She was so very small, a nearly fairy-like quality about her with that skin so pale it was sickly, thrown into a deep contrast with the levels of darkness that were her hair and eyes. The hospital gown, a thin contraption hardly fit for wearing by any individual, still hung far too loosely around her waifish body, exposing bandages and faded scars intermingled with the fresher wounds she was being treated for, and it was - unnerving, he assumed the word was.   
  
This was also not getting him anywhere quickly enough to satisfy his patience or prominent lack thereof.  
  
"Aimee," he spoke in his most forcibly pleasant voice, the horrible one that was a mask and overly common in the psychology field. Careful steps were taken to cross the floor, a conscious effort to shorten his normally loping stride into one a bit calmer and a little less unorthodox so as to avoid alarming her as he seemed so apt at doing. He paused near the table, hands turned palms-up in a truce gesture. Her head, a river of dark hair flowing around the polished alabaster stone of her face, tilted slowly toward him, those deep reflecting pools of oceanic swirls focusing loosely on his face in spite of the blank emptiness she had summoned into them. She was motionless, then, a quiet specter waiting for what he might dole out to her, be it encouragement or punishment, and he nearly swore at the confusing frustration inside himself, wondering if she would ever at least trust him with some part of her constantly.   
  
When she made no move to lift her head further to make it easier to watch her features, only imperceptibly tighten her hands around the cloth of the gown pulled into an engulfing swath around her crossed legs, he prayed he would not manage to spark her flight reaction again. Slowly, cautiously in hopes she would not flinch or turn away, he rested his fingertips, a shade of tanned brown against her own continuous ivory, on her cheek and pressed gently. Something flickered through her eyes, dilating the pupils before they relaxed and fell back into her controlled façade, and her breath hitched whether in fear or another thing entirely, and her own fingers grew tighter yet on the cloth, fisting dangerously and wrists quivering though the rest of her did not. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said, beginning with the damned psychology voice and ending with his own natural husk, too bothered at the moment to care about it.   
  
His other hand framed the opposite side of her face, fingertips and the rough pad of his thumb digging almost tenderly into her thin cheeks, and he lifted her face just a bit with his hands, resting the warmth of his palms near her jaw line as she seemed to blanch. "See?" he suddenly smiled, his rare honestly felt one that just tweaked the corners of his mouth and parted to expose the thinnest line of teeth. Her eyes blinked tellingly, caught off-guard, and her hands relaxed in her lap, slowly uncurling from their painful fists as that sardonic eyebrow of hers picked its way up along her forehead. "I'm touching you," he moved one of his palms to remind her of his presence, "but I'm not hurting you. Your nurses, the doctor, everyone: they touch you, but not because they want to hurt you.  
  
"It's not about power," continued Duo, musing in a corner of his mind where, exactly, he was pulling all this philosophy from lately. Her eyes darted nervously anyway, panning around the room as if perhaps she could find something to put her mind at ease, and he stifled the urge to sigh in heartfelt exasperation, instead strengthening his grip enough for her to return her dark orbs to him. "It's not about power," he repeated, "or control, or anything like that. I'm not here because you need to be hurt or reminded of something that bastard put into your mind, I'm here to get rid of those things he made you believe." He grinned rakishly, old movies suddenly brought to mind and corny dialogue popping into his mouth before he managed to rein in his slightly odder tendencies, and he said cheerfully, "It's what I do!"  
  
That upturned eyebrow of hers was, thank God, still twisted upwards in disbelieving sarcasm, an unconscious ineptitude on her part as she persisted in maintaining her elaborate charade of icy nonexistence. "Do you understand?" he asked as gently as he could manage, flattening his hands on her face, fingers tickling into the cushioned swell of her dark hair. "You aren't in any danger whatsoever from anyone here, anyone at all. Not Miss Jessica or Elizabeth, or Doctor Anders, not Mina, and, yeah, I know it's hard to believe, but not from me, either." He attempted a smile, the corner of his mouth flickering up into a peculiar, lopsided rictus of a smile, and he watched as her lips thinned, rolling together and pressing as though she was thinking deeply, concentrating soulfully on his words. Her eyebrows knit, curving and arching down, ridding her face of the skeptical look it had seemed to gain on its own, and she somehow managed to twist her body about so she was bodily facing him in sync with her head.  
  
A pair of small hands slapped either side of his face, a stretch of rough, pebbled gauze smacking him squarely on the jaw, and he paused, noting her skinny arms flowing to the hands currently grasping him. "Me no hurt you," he nodded, and her hands twitched, following the movement whilst fingers pried at the skin. She looked almost wholly fascinated, turning her grip into a light-fingered assault of ticklish feelings as she grazed over full cheekbones, tracing down to feel his shaven chin and popping his nose with her thumb amidst her tactile discoveries. "Ow, not so hard there," he grimaced, wrinkling his nose and working his mouth in a pout as she slunk her hands higher, plucking curiously at his long, uncombed bangs.   
  
Aimee nearly pulled back then, her fingertips hesitating and jerking across the wispy hairs undone from his braid near his temples, and he quickly took his own hands from her face, wrapping them firmly over her slender wrists. She did pull back then, fear crossing her features prominently, and he gave her a stern, albeit concerned, look, before his own face collapsed into a wry, wide grin that completely engulfed his lips with the flash of teeth. "Relax," he laughed, guiding his hands to surround hers in a friendly handclasp, "I come in peace."  
  
Reluctantly, after a long, overly drawn moment of waiting and relative silence, she jerked her hands to her shoulders and he was forced to swipe his hands from her, granting her the freedom of herself as she rocked back, legs still folded, her mouth frowning as she thought. Duo was considering whether or not it was worth repeating the same actions again, in vain hopes it would turn out with the same results or possibly an even better turn-out, when the door swung quietly open, admitting the nervous shell of Elizabeth, RN.   
  
"Doctor Anders needs her in x-ray," she said meekly, all but wringing her hands together as she nibbled anxiously at the curve of her lower lip, "to scan her ankle." She was speaking timidly, her face fairly declaring she was hardly used to dealing with such matters, and she walked quietly to the dark-haired girl, offering her hand in support for the girl's descent from table to floor, swathed ankle immediately drawing attention. "He apologizes for cutting the appointment short, but he needs examinations of the fracture to make sure it's healing rightly."  
  
"We really need to stop meeting this way," Duo muttered to himself as Aimee gripped the offered hand briefly, holding only so long as it took to gingerly switch her weight to her ankles, one swollen, the other sturdy, and she let go as soon as she was on the ground, following silently after the young nurse toward the sole door in the room. "Hey," he called swiftly, catching Elizabeth's arm and pulling the nurse into an unexpected pause in motion, "try to bathe her tonight, okay? She was scratching at her bandages during the entire session, and even if her bandages are being changed daily, she does need to at least be doused in some water. Hell, it's common sense." He looked her straight in the eyes and she nodded, stammering an agreement, and he released her with a broad smile, switching that brilliant gaze to the voiceless patient. "See you tomorrow?" he suggested, and she brushed past him without a word or a hint of acknowledgement, trailing at the back of the nurse.  
  
"Right, then," he replied to his question in a muted rumbling mutter, opening his crystalline eyes as wide as they would go for the time being. "I'll be seeing you tomorrow, Doctor Maxwell, sir, so you can make more stupid comments in a half-assed manner when I'm pretending you don't exist." He cast a despairing look at the windbreaker bunched on the floor and wrinkled his nose unhappily, crossing the floor to scoop it cautiously up into a wadded ball of cloth and unpleasant stench, holding it out from his shoulder with a comically twisted face. "And, joy of joys, Dennis is next," he grumbled.  
  
--~--  
  
She let them buckle the heavy curtain of lead-lined draperies over her thin body, tying in sturdy knots the thin strings that would keep it tucked around her, a shallow wall of protection from the radiation pouring out of the machine above the table whenever the cold men in white flicked their holy switch. Arms spread slightly to the side and legs kept close together without touching but for the upper stretch of her thighs, she stared into the deep oblivion of the soulless machine dwelling on her vision. It was a long rectangle of framed black, white tracing the outside of the lengthy box gazing without eyes upon her body. Beneath it she waited on the mirroring table set into the floor, watching the high ceiling of darkened yellow shaded with red. The room was dusky, kept in perpetual twilight for the sake of the filmy x-rays pinned onto boards around her, and she felt dead inside as she watched them move, waiting for one of the robots disguised as humans to prod her or slap her, do what was meant.  
  
Within her chest, the deep ebony oceans of her soul, she felt a quiet death, as if something was being slowly ripped away from her by a new occurrence, a new change that sought to protect her or destroy her. She thought perhaps this was brought about by the words and actions of Maxwell-god-of-death, if this was how he was going to punish her for her willful ways and her sinful actions: do not question man even in your mind, be quiet and still and never react, be subservient and accepting of what you deserve - give in, fall still, let the pain take over everything as the man punishes what is wrong, and never fool yourself into believing you are more than what the man says you are.  
  
It mattered little to her, as there was a chill void inside where she once had been, a waiting cold that saw nothing and recognized nothing, for she was nothing, and she closed her eyes tiredly, dark eyelashes stark on the ivory of her face. Tendrils of emotion still waved through her occasionally, when she thought of the massive confusion, the contradictions inside her head when around the man with the oak tree hair, and when she thought of the warming affection wrapped about her while near Jessica-the-nurse and Golden Mina, and she breathed the sterile air of the room as she tried to unravel the enigmas of those remaining emotions.  
  
The two women gave her a sense of protective care, a sort of loudly engulfing maternity she had not known for many years. She bled the strength to move from her limbs as the first switch was flicked, turning the machine into a whining hum that clicked and vanished swiftly when she had been photographed the first of however many times they would need. She could hear, eyes still closed gently, men murmuring amongst each other, the scraping sound of wheels carrying heavy equipment passing over the floor toward her, a smaller x-ray machine being tugged to grant them a closer detail of her wounded ankle. The splint had been removed, letting the non-circulating air access to her tenderized skin and a path to creep more fully under the lead blanket swaddling her with its gradually crushing weight.   
  
As they prepared her and the anxious voice of the smaller nurse, one who brought no affect for better or worse from her, piped up, informing her it would be just a minute more, they would be done soon and she would be taken back to the room, where she could be alone for the rest of the day. The new machine began to hum, clicking hurriedly and winding down as they directed the new images into the database of the twin computers decorating the far corners, and she was like a porcelain doll. She did not smile, nor did she frown; she granted no response in either direction.  
  
Alone, she whispered in her mind softly, no Maxwell-god-of-death in the room waiting for me. She felt ambiguity at that thought, knowing he frightened her and fascinated her, giving her feelings of confused meaning, from a wondering awe to an unnerving sense of safety near him. He is a man, she screamed at herself with the part of her body that was not numb, and men can never be safe! It is wrong to feel safe around a man, wrong to want to be near a man because he does not hurt or threaten or cause the kind of fear that turns souls into steel and ashes!   
  
She bit her tongue to silence her mind, and let them take the pictures they needed, all the while wondering what part of her had died and if she would ever care about losing it.   
--~--  
Author's Notes: Garf! I'm loading this on my art teacher's computer at school (long, convoluted story), so I don't have space to write all my notes - thanks to all, especially (as always), Kaiya-chan, who liked the nowhere line (hee - me, too!). I'll repost at a later time! Many, many apologies. 


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